


Perennial

by zimriya



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Hanahaki Disease, Horror, M/M, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:02:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24918790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zimriya/pseuds/zimriya
Summary: “You have such beautiful roses,” Johnny says. “I’ve never seen anything like them before.”“Thank you,” Jaehyun says, with a smile that shows only half of one dimple. “And you wouldn’t—they’re one of a kind.” He keeps smiling with both dimples this time, but for some reason, Johnny thinks he looks sad.
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Comments: 120
Kudos: 202





	1. Winter

**Author's Note:**

> This is very purposefully tagged “Creator Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings.”  
> Please keep that in mind. 
> 
> Betaed (and enabled) by Hexmen, who sent me the tweet that this fic was inspired by.

The house is huge—sprawling, empty, impressive, and nothing Johnny would have thought to buy for himself. It sits in a neighborhood with a price bracket Johnny can hardly even fathom, overlooks the ocean (although maybe that’s not hard, given that it’s on an island), and boasts enough spare bedrooms to house his extended family and then some. According to his mom’s rather sporadic emails, it used to belong to his aunt slash grandmother—or someone he might have called aunt slash grandmother, had she still been alive. The house is only Johnny’s because no one else was on speaking terms with the woman, but it had “family value,” or something, and not even the fact that Johnny’s father was currently living in America was enough to keep them from calling him. Johnny knows he has other living family in South Korea, but despite having spent all of his undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate years in the country, Johnny has never made a point to search them out. He’s perfectly aware of the fact that he’s the odd child out—the son of parents who immigrated to Chicago with an English name and not nearly enough fluency. There’s no need for any more reminders.

But this… Johnny wouldn’t have expected this. When his mother first called him asking if he had any interest in spending a year on Jeju Island, Johnny had jumped at the chance to get away from the bustle of the city. He’d spent four years in college and two years getting his MBA, then two more years working his way up the corporate rungs at a company that specialized in corporate branding. The job had been good and Johnny had excelled in the sales department, but everyone else there had been much older, and Johnny hadn’t had many friends. Johnny had felt—still feels—like he’s floating through life. A big old house on Jeju Island had sounded exactly like the sort of getaway that Johnny had been looking for, and he’d wasted no time putting in his two weeks’ notice and cancelling his lease. He’d packed up his life into a depressingly small number of boxes, hopped the first plane out of Gimpo Airport, and arrived, one surprisingly crisp January morning several weeks later, to find… this.

The sort of house that should host family reunions, or at least great big indoor gatherings.

The sort of house that could be the backdrop for a movie.

The sort of house Johnny would never have dreamed of.

“Wow,” Johnny says in English, then in Korean. “ _Wow_.”

He swallows.

Johnny knows very little about keeping a house, and this is much more than just a house. It has enough bedrooms to make his head _spin_ and is way too large for one—admittedly taller than average—Korean-American male, but it’s better than a two bedroom with only the internet for company, so Johnny does his best to take it in. There’s a chimney. Two floors. He has neighbors. One of his new neighbors has a house that could rival Johnny’s in size, but where Johnny’s seems vintage and rustic and more like something he’d call an English cottage, the house directly to the right of his is sleeker, with a much more modern build. The only thing out of place among the glass and the metalwork are the flowers because Johnny’s new neighbor has… _flowers_.

There’s no other word for it; the emphasis is totally necessary.

Johnny’s new neighbor is cultivating a garden that honestly takes Johnny’s breath away, and from his vantage point—slightly to the left of the drive to his new house, holding only a carry on and a tiny wheeled suitcase, still not having paid the cab driver who took him all the way out to the edge of the island—he can only see parts of it. There’s something red—roses, maybe?—and something bright gold. The roses just peek over the fence and the yellow flowers are barely more than a brilliant speck, but their vibrancy is enough to make Johnny’s eyes hurt. They’re beautiful. They take Johnny’s breath away.

Johnny feels relieved, because at least he’ll have someone to beg advice off of, once he gets settled. The state of his own front yard is depressing to say the least, and while Johnny’s no stranger to basic lawn care—he was a teenager growing up middle class in suburban North America—he’s glad that at least one of them clearly knows what they’re doing when it comes to landscaping.

Johnny should get settled, though. Johnny should see the house. Johnny should—

“Hey, Ahjusshi, are you planning on paying any time soon? I should charge you for the wait—”

Johnny does his best not to be too bothered by the fact that a kid clearly fresh out of college and working as a cab driver had the audacity to call him “Ahjusshi,” but he fishes out his wallet and forks over the requested amount of won anyway.

“Thanks,” the kid says when he’s done. “Do you need help with the—” He doesn’t finish that sentence, just gestures towards the trunk.

“No need,” Johnny says, already having grabbed his one sorry excuse for a suitcase. “Thank you—”

“No problem.” The kid is already reversing, clearly eager to get back to the airport in search of more tourists to scam out of almost seventy USD.

Johnny just keeps smiling and pivots to better face his new home. Then he hoists his carry on onto one shoulder, tugs on his suitcase, and goes to let himself into the house.

Into _his_ house. It’s _Johnny’s_ house, now.

Wow.

* * *

The first day, Johnny mostly sleeps. He calls his mom twice and then Facetimes both his parents so that he can walk them around the empty mausoleum, which they both tell him he cannot call Grandma Suh’s house. Johnny tells them he can call Grandma Suh’s house whatever he wants given it is now Johnny Suh’s house, but that just earns him a disapproving head shake (his mom) and a subtle thumbs up (his dad). He orders take out from the first place he finds on Naver with his location turned on because he can’t be bothered to figure out the location of the nearest grocery store and eats in the too-large kitchen without even taking out plates and chopsticks. The place came fully furnished with all of Grandma Suh’s furniture and things, which Johnny is grateful for, because he’d hate to have to spend time and effort at a furniture store, or something. Although Grandma Suh clearly had a thing for stale tapestries, and Johnny draws the line at her princess canopy. Contrary to his current surroundings, Johnny is not the hero in a Victorian novel. He’ll just have to settle for sleeping under a hook in the ceiling.

The second day Johnny ventures out to find the essentials—the grocery store, the gym, and the nearest place where he can order tteokbokki and ramen so he doesn’t die, while the act of leaving the house affords him some illusion of adulthood. He goes running on the beach and marvels at the fact that it’s January and still kind of warm; warmer than Seoul at least, and Johnny would rather be caught dead than acknowledge that he’s lost his Chicago-bred hardiness for cold weather. He comes home and showers, then gets it over with and does an inventory of all the bedrooms, the kitchen, the dining room, and a room he decides has to be called a parlor despite that being something he can’t believe he now owns. He determines that Grandma Suh had no interest in joining the twenty-first century, then fights with himself about the potential idiocy of spending his last paycheck on cable and internet. But really, there is no other option—Johnny could never live without cable and internet. Grandma Suh may have been from the dark ages, but Johnny Suh _is not_. Besides, he’s always wanted to wire a house with Bluetooth—music from every angle: a veritable wet dream.

Those first two days he talks to nobody save his parents, and only posts two aesthetic beach shots and one post-run, half-naked selca on Instagram. It’s nice, if a bit too quiet, and Johnny thinks he might be able to get used to it. He’s not too lonely, plus the school year will start soon, and the island will be overrun with college kids. It’s a good first and second day in a new place, and Johnny isn’t complaining.

And then on the third day, Johnny meets his neighbor.

His neighbor with the flowers—a man shorter than Johnny with pretty, dyed brown hair, and dimples. Johnny first sees him on his way out for what’s becoming his early morning run, standing outside of his modern, sleek, oversized mansion next to a man in full police uniform, talking. Johnny trips over his too large feet and approximates something of a bow in their direction, but neither of them pause in their conversation, so he feels stupid to have tried to greet them. Never mind that his neighbor—tall, pretty, and young enough that Johnny wonders if he’s moved in next to an entire family—has clearly seen him and smiled back, all without letting the cop in on the fact that he’s no longer listening.

Johnny passes the cop car on his way out towards the beach but decides it’s probably nothing to worry about. Maybe someone broke in, or trespassed, or simply dared to step the wrong way on the impeccable lawn—Johnny doesn’t know, nor care. It’s later than he’d like and a Thursday, and Johnny is finally starting to learn the best streets to run on.

Who cares if he has an attractive, dimpled neighbor who’s currently talking with the cops?

Not Johnny.

Johnny only has thoughts for sun, sand, and sea.

And a shower.

Johnny will really need a shower after this. It might not get hotter than high forties on Jeju Island in January, but five kilometers at a brisk pace is brutal. After the shower, he forgets about his neighbor with the dimples.

Until his neighbor with the dimples is standing on his doorstep, letting Johnny get up close and personal with the incredibly distracting moon craters on either side of his very pretty mouth.

He’s brought Johnny a bottle of wine.

He leaned on the doorbell for longer than Johnny would have thought possible for someone so young—Johnny would put money on him still being in college, given enlistment—and doesn’t seem upset at the wait, even though Johnny spent more than a few seconds just squinting at him through the peephole.

“Hi,” he says, when Johnny pulls open the door. “I’m Jeong Jaehyun.” The dimples really are distracting, his skin really is shockingly pale, and his hair looks far too soft for something unnaturally colored. He’s—Johnny would hate to say pretty, but. He looks like he ought to be an idol. The wine is… out of place. Then he sticks out his hand in a gesture so solidly un-Korean, that Johnny can only stare. Has he… has he broadcasted his foreignness already? It’s been three days. Johnny’s seen the man _once_ , and yeah, he did sort of stumble on his way past him, but the man was talking to the police—Johnny thinks he ought to be _allowed_. Maybe Grandma Suh mentioned him, or something, although why Grandma Suh would be talking about Johnny to Johnny’s—to _this nice young man_ , is beyond Johnny at this point. Did Grandma Suh even know who Johnny was, when she was alive?

His neighbor is still smiling and holding his hand out.

“Johnny Suh,” Johnny says finally, when it becomes clear he’s made a complete fool of himself by not taking the man—Jaehyun’s hand. He ends up mixing the order of the names because he’s so startled, and immediately regrets doing so. Now there’s no way around the issue, though handshakes are not inherently un-Korean. Johnny’s just not used to doing them outside of business because for some reason his apartment complex in Seoul was predominantly inhabited by older women who liked to pinch his cheeks. Johnny is… a disaster. “Nice to meet you,” Johnny finishes up with, bowing his head quickly. “Uh—do you live next door?”

And—great.

Johnny’s not usually this much of a bumbling idiot. Jaehyun clearly lives next door, and he smiled at Johnny earlier, so he knows. Yes, he has dimples, good skin, and nice hair. He’s pretty. Johnny went to SMU; he was classmates with plenty of pretty people. Heck, Johnny would go so far to say that _he_ is pretty people. This is just unfortunate, and kind of absurd.

But if Jaehyun is offended by any of it, he doesn’t let it show, letting his hand drop all the way back down to his side and smiling at Johnny with even more prominent dimples. “Yes,” he says. “I live just over there.” He points towards his house with a thumb like Johnny doesn’t know, because he’s nice on top of friendly, and perfectly willing to let Johnny get away with sticking his foot in his mouth. “I think you’re the youngest person in the entire neighborhood,” Jaehyun continues, like he’s imparting a great secret. “Well. Except for me, that is.” He shifts the wine bottle between both hands as he finishes speaking, the smile touching the corners of his mouth now much closer to a smirk.

Johnny takes that for the opportunity that it very clearly is, horrible first-week-in-the-country-as-a-foreigner lessons not easily unlearned. “I was born in 1995.”

Jaehyun’s dimples come back. “Like I said,” he says. “1997. Hyung.”

For some reason Johnny’s toes curl against the bare tile of Grandma Suh—of _his_ foyer. “Did you bring me wine, Jaehyun-ah?”

Jaehyun’s eyes crinkle in the corners like he’s pleased that Johnny has caught on so quickly, but he readily produces the bottle for Johnny’s appraisal anyway. “Yes,” he says, clearing his throat. “A Seresin 2014 Sun & Moon Pinot Noir. Red. Younger than both of us— _and_ the rest of our neighbors.” He really is breathtakingly attractive when he smiles, and Johnny doesn’t feel at all threatened by that fact.

“Did you bring me wine as a housewarming gift?” he says instead. “Isn’t that traditionally supposed to be food—a cake, maybe?” For a second Johnny worries he’s gone too far with the teasing—it is, after all, only minute five of day one—but then Jaehyun puts his head back and laughs.

“I’m not very good at baking,” he says.

For some reason Johnny would bet he’s lying.

“And I don’t cook on the first date.”

Johnny decides he likes his new neighbor. “You said the rest of the neighborhood is much older? What would you have done if I’d been a woman in my sixties?” Johnny shifts on his feet and tries on his best stern look.

Jaehyun just shifts on his own feet and raises an eyebrow right back. “I’d have brought two bottles and a corkscrew,” he says simply, and now Johnny is the one exposing his throat so that he can laugh.

“I yield,” he says. “You win—give me the wine.”

“The Seresin 2014,” says Jaehyun. “Sun. Moon. Red. Fruity, but pairs well with Korean food—”

Johnny takes hold of the bottle and totally thinks nothing of how their hands touch around the neck. “Yes, yes, the nice red, younger-than-both-of-us wine from New Zealand—are you a wine salesman, or something?”

Jaehyun releases the bottle with a grin. “You knew it was from New Zealand.”

“The guys I used to work with had a—never mind, it’s not important,” Johnny says, not keen to relive the weeks he spent pouring over wine magazines trying to fit in. “Thank you.” He dips his head again. “Would you—do you want to come in and try a glass?”

Jaehyun’s eyes flick somewhere over Johnny’s head, but Johnny doesn’t have a clock hanging in the house yet, so he can’t be looking at much of anything. Johnny throws his own glance at his watch and finds that it’s just after one in the afternoon.

“It’s not after five,” Jaehyun says.

“It is somewhere,” Johnny retorts, with ease. “Er—”

“I’ve got—uh—things—” For some reason Jaehyun’s ears are blushing, and Johnny thinks that’s adorable. “Welcome to the neighborhood, Johnny Suh.” Jaehyun bows as well, and the Western order of Johnny’s name doesn’t seem to trip him up at him at all—the pronunciation of Johnny’s English first name near perfect. Jaehyun turns and starts heading back the way he’d come. “Don’t be a stranger, Hyung!” he calls over his shoulder, one hand raised. “You’re the only person close to my age, although you are still ancient—”

“Hey,” Johnny yells back. “I’m only two years older!”

Jaehyun just laughs, hand lowering to this side. He disappears back inside his house and is gone.

Johnny is left staring after him, holding the bottle of wine. That’s—his new neighbor is a little strange, if not shy. Charming. Born in 1997. Dimpled. Johnny decides he likes him, this Jeong Jaehyun.

* * *

The power goes out early next week. There’s a storm—Johnny is aware that he’s becoming a walking, talking, living-alone-in-a-big-scary-mansion cliché—but the power goes out and Johnny is abruptly thrust into darkness. The only person he knows on the island is Jaehyun, who gave Johnny his cellphone number just the other day, so he calls him. He doesn’t text him, which—maybe Johnny’s sentimental, or something.

Maybe he just misses hearing someone else’s voice.

“Hello?” Jaehyun says.

“Jaehyun, hi,” Johnny says. “Look. My power’s out.”

There’s a pause. “Yes, I had noticed that you seemed to be very suddenly living in darkness,” Jaehyun says. “Why are you calling me? I can’t fix it. You should call an electrician.”

Johnny whirls to squint pointlessly out the kitchen windows before Jaehyun finishes his sentence, like he’ll somehow be able to see much of anything, let alone Jeong Jaehyun, more than a few feet away, in his own mammoth sized house. “Right,” he agrees after the pause has clearly gone on for far too long. “So…”

“Mine’s out too,” Jaehyun offers suddenly. “Sorry.” There’s another pause, but Johnny swears he’s smiling. “Shall I come over and hold your hand, Johnny-hyung?”

Johnny barks out a startled laugh. “Fuck you!” he says. “You’re the only other person I know! I just wanted to know if you had heat.”

“It’s not that cold,” Jaehyun says. “Aren’t you from Chicago?”

Johnny doesn’t remember telling Jaehyun that, but he must have. They’ve small talked more than once, outside their houses. Johnny knows Jaehyun lived in New England for four years when he was a kid—in Connecticut; it’s why he supports the Patriots, the fucker. Johnny’s proud of where he comes from. Surely him being Windy City bred had come up. “Fuck you,” he says again.

“Anyway, I don’t have heat either,” Jaehyun says. “I could come over and we could huddle for warmth, though.”

Johnny narrows his eyes. If this were anyone else… if it were any other time… “What’s wrong with you?” Johnny says, which isn’t, _are you flirting with me?_ , so he’s counting it as a win.

Jaehyun makes an odd noise—a cough, maybe, or just honest embarrassment.

“Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny says. “Are you afraid of the dark?”

This time the silence is definitely punctuated by coughing, and a lot of it.

Johnny grins. He’s always had that effect on people, and he loves it.

“What?” Jaehyun says. “No.”

Johnny grins hard. “You are,” he says. “It’s okay. I was afraid of the dark too… when I was six.”

Jaehyun sputters. “I’m not afraid of the dark!”

“You don’t have to make up an excuse to come over,” Johnny continues, pleased. “I’ll even hold your hand free of charge.”

“Look—I’m not—I’m coming over to murder you,” Jaehyun says, sounding like his ears are turning that wonderful red again. “You wait. I’ll be there. Murder.”

“I’ll be here with open arms,” Johnny tells him happily since he can’t hear a dial tone. “I give very good hugs—everybody says so.”

There’s a growl, and then Jaehyun finally hangs up, but Johnny just grins, pleased.

Jaehyun arrives on his doorstep a few moments later, dripping wet and pissed, clearly not having thought through his quest to commit neighbor-cide and having gone right out into the storm.

Johnny makes a huge show of handing him one of the godawful umbrellas Grandma Suh had right next to the door, laughing, as Jaehyun scowls at him and shakes water all over the foyer. He doesn’t get Johnny because Johnny is taller and bigger and much too fast. “Were you that afraid?” Johnny says when Jaehyun is done shaking like a dog. “Did you forget your shoes? Come here.” He opens his arms.

“I’ll forget your shoes,” Jaehyun mutters darkly, but lets Johnny bundle him into a towel a few moments later anyway, rubbing despondently at his ankle with the ball of one foot. “I—”

“Panicked,” Johnny finishes for him, giving in and giving his head a good scrub with a bare hand—his hair is exactly as soft as he’d expected. “Now come on. It’s dark—”

“It’s dark in all of your house,” Jaehyun tells him grudgingly, as Johnny starts leading him further into the place in search of spare clothes. Jaehyun wasn’t out in the rain for that long, but Johnny would be remiss as a host if he let him lounge about dripping. “And creepy.” Jaehyun seems to feel as charitable as Johnny does towards some of Grandma Suh’s choices in interior decorating—the large, heavily endowed ox statue they just walked by case in point. “You should have come over to mine.”

Johnny tries not to let that sentence make him shudder—it’s been five days and Jaehyun is just Johnny’s new neighbor, but Johnny has been without human contact and is going nearly mad because of it.

“It’s cold and dark in my house too, but it’s much less creepy.” Jaehyun follows Johnny quietly up the rest of the stairs and into the master bedroom, taking the clothes Johnny hands him with one hand, and holding the towel wrapped around his shoulders with the other.

Johnny fights the urge to hug him—or kiss him—because that would be stupid, and too-soon. He’s _going nearly mad._

“What the fuck is that?” Jaehyun blurts, staring down at the pile of fabric that Johnny knows is Grandma Suh’s cursed princess canopy.

“We can’t talk about that,” Johnny tells him quickly. “I don’t know what to do with it—I should burn it, but I’d feel bad about burning it.”

Jaehyun keeps staring.

“I couldn’t sleep under it,” Johnny continues, for some reason going over to poke at the thing with his foot, then bending so he can hold part of it up for Jaehyun to see. It’s a horrible shade of chartreuse that doesn’t match the room at all, has got some sort of ruffle near the seams that maybe was supposed to be a statement, and it’s garish. It’s fucking garish; that’s the only word Johnny can come up with, and he feels valid.

“Why can’t you burn it?” says Jaehyun. “It obviously needs to be burned.”

“Hey,” Johnny says. “It belonged to my grandma.” Never mind he was the one who brought up burning it, never mind she might not have really been his grandma, never mind he’d never met her when she was alive.

“Your grandmother had appalling taste,” Jaehyun says, finally walking to set the clothes down on Johnny’s unmade bed and pulling the towel up to try to dry his hair. “You should burn it.”

“I can’t do that—she might haunt me,” Johnny says. “And she was my grandma—”

Jaehyun pulls the towel away from his face and squints at Johnny, who can’t help but think it’s amazing how good human vision can get in the dark, after a while. “Hang on. I thought you said you weren’t sure how she was related to you?”

Johnny doesn’t remember saying that either, but clearly he must have. And Grandma Suh… Johnny knows the women in his family, even if he didn’t know her. She’d have talked about him… maybe. Assuming she knew who he was. He doesn’t say any of that to Jaehyun. “She was _hopefully_ my grandma. So, I can’t burn it because she might _haunt me_.”

Jaehyun seems frozen staring at him with the towel still on his head and his eyes squinted into slits. “Oh,” he says. “Oh, Hyung.”

Johnny decides the shiver that goes through him is only because of the cold; there’s no heat, after all.

“You believe in _ghost_ s.” Jaehyun says the word like Johnny has said he believes the earth is flat, or something—not just in the existence of some life after death.

“You _don’t_ believe in ghosts?” Johnny says. “Jaehyun- _ah_!”

Jaehyun pulls the towel away from his head and drops it on the ground, wrapping his arms around himself to grab the hem of his shirt and pull it up and over his face. He pauses once he’s got it there and twists to get one arm out of the sleeve.

Johnny feels heat fill his face and turns abruptly back around, staring at the expanse of wall instead of the expanse of muscled chest and six pack. Fuck, if Jaehyun isn’t ripped, though. Ripped and perfect, even including the stretch of shiny scar tissue just under his left pectoral. Johnny is—Johnny should find out what gym Jaehyun uses.

“I believe in things I can see,” Jaehyun says, muffled through the fabric of the shirt. Johnny keeps staring at the wall, starting to whistle in his head. “And aliens—because it’s arrogant to think we’re the only life in the universe—the universe is fucking big—”

“It’s arrogant—it’s arrogant to think there’s no afterlife!” Johnny protests. “Why do like all religions talk about it, then? Things you can see—things you can see—what about all those people who’ve experienced things?”

“Humans are obsessed with death,” Jaehyun says promptly. “Self-fulfilling prophecy—”

Johnny is tempted to turn around just so that he can shake him— _what?_

“—anyway, why did your hopefully grandmother collect board games?”

Johnny does turn around finally, but mostly out of surprise. “What—”

Jaehyun’s not standing by the bed anymore, but he’s left his wet clothes neatly folded on top of the towel. He’s also gone further into Johnny’s bedroom, wandered into the impressive walk-in closet, and when Johnny follows, appears to be staring up at an—admittedly—grandiose expanse of board games. Johnny looks at them and finds he doesn’t have an answer.

“Well,” he says finally. “Maybe she needed something to do when the power went out?” He nudges Jaehyun in the side with an elbow. “I did call an electrician,” he adds. “He said it happens all the time, and they’ll send someone to look at it in the morning.” He nudges him again. “Shouldn’t you know this? You’ve lived here longer than I have.”

“My power doesn’t go out all the time,” Jaehyun says, nudging him back with no small amount of glee. The shirt Johnny lent him is a little big on him, but Johnny is doing his best not to notice the frankly indecent gape of fabric around his neck. “And neither does yours, if I’m remembering correctly. You should fire your electrician. Get someone else to fix it for you.”

“I thought you said you can’t fix it?” Johnny says, nudging him again because he can’t help himself. “And he’s not _my_ electrician he’s just—some guy—the first—”

“—name that came up on Naver? Millennials,” Jaehyun says disparagingly.

Johnny narrows his eyes at him and slaps a hand up onto the shelf without looking. “Gen Z,” he counters as he does so, pulling out—North American Monopoly; Johnny can work with North American Monopoly; if it had been British Monopoly, he might have lost his mind. “Here.” He thrusts the game into Jaehyun’s chest. “As long as you’re in my house, you might as well entertain me.”

Jaehyun’s entire face lights up like Johnny’s given him the winning set of lottery numbers, but he takes the board game (and none of the opportunity for innuendo) eagerly, then follows Johnny back down to the kitchen in search of candles.

He’s shockingly bad at Monopoly, but perfectly able to match Johnny drink for drink on that bottle of New Zealand wine.

“Fruity,” Johnny says, clinking their glasses together and watching Jaehyun tighten his jaw after ending up in jail again. “Would pair well with Korean food—versatile.”

“Yes, Hyung—are you cheating?” Jaehyun says, sipping from his own glass and frowning at the spread of money between them. Johnny is doing well, but Jaehyun is still holding on, despite that fact.

Johnny just grins, pleased. “We can’t all be good at everything, Jaehyun-ah,” he says. “Not even you.”

Jaehyun just stares at him with his mouth open. His face is cast into shadow by the flickering candlelight, yet is somehow no less captivating. “You don’t even know me,” he says finally. “It has been five days.”

Johnny feels his cheeks heat but holds Jaehyun’s gaze. “No, but… I’d like to think I’m starting to get to know you,” he says finally. “I could one day know you, if you’d like?” For some reason he feels like this is more than just two neighbors caught on the precipice of friendship, or acquaintance. But that’s all it is, surely. Maybe Johnny’s just drunk on the wine, or not used to making new friends, anymore. It has been a while since he’s had to.

Jaehyun stares at Johnny for a long, long time, and then his whole face breaks out into a wide, dimpled smile. “Yeah,” he says. “Of course.” He’s the one clinking their glasses, now. “To our budding friendship—now roll the dice, you cheater.”

Johnny laughs, but does.

* * *

He doesn’t forget about the ghost thing. On Wednesday, he runs into Jaehyun in the grocery store, and follows him around well after he’s finished stocking up on his essentials, running down a mental list of all manner of make believe.

“So, you don’t believe in ghosts,” he leads with, as Jaehyun spends a shocking amount of time feeling up apples. He’s already got quite a lot more food than Johnny, but Johnny supposes that’s to be expected. Jaehyun lives alone, but in March he’ll be starting his second year of medical school at Jeju University, so he’s not alone all the time in his big house like Johnny is. But Jaehyun also knows how to cook, hence the careful inspection of his fruit selection. Johnny thinks if he could cook, he’d get a lot more food too. Experiment. Have fun. Live a little. Open himself up enough to believe in more than just what he can see. “What about like… Bigfoot?” Johnny says.

Jaehyun puts three apples into his bag and goes to weigh them, not looking up at Johnny. “He’s standing right in front of me, so yes,” he says mildly as he does so. “Are you done—”

“Haha, very funny—The Loch Ness Monster—Nessie? Do you believe in Nessie?”

Jaehyun finishes with his apples and moves on in search of more produce, not commenting. Johnny follows.

“No? How can you not believe in Nessie—aliens? Do you believe in aliens?”

“I believe I said I believed in aliens—”

“How can you believe in aliens but not ghosts?” Johnny interrupts him. “What kind of person are you—”

“A reasonable one,” Jaehyun says, thrusting a tomato in Johnny’s face and making him go nearly cross eyed. “What do you think?”

Johnny fights the urge to stick out his tongue and lick the thing. “Uh, fine,” he says. “It’s fine”—Jaehyun’s expression is almost disappointed—“I mean, um, yum?” He hopes that’s the right answer. Rather suddenly, he realizes he’s been following Jaehyun for quite a while. He thinks he put ice cream in his basket before he found Jaehyun near the cereal. Maybe he should run it back into the freezer and grab it later.

Jaehyun pulls the tomato closer to himself and nods, humming. “As I said, it’s arrogant to think—”

“—we’re the only life in the universe, I know,” Johnny finishes, grumbling. “You’re weird,” he says. “I’m leaving.”

Jaehyun raises an eyebrow. “You’re the one who’s following me,” he says.

“Yeah, well, you have dimples,” Johnny replies, then feels like an idiot and turns on his heel in search of the registers.

* * *

Thursday and Friday pass much of the same, with Johnny running into Jaehyun at the ice cream parlor, one department store, and outside the gym. Jaehyun doesn’t believe in astrology and he seems particularly unimpressed to find out Johnny is an Aquarius born in the year of the boar. He likes pistachio ice cream and buys beanies in forty degree weather—because it’s still January, and he likes hats. He’s sarcastic and he makes Johnny laugh, and he convinces him not to sign up for a gym membership.

“Just come over to my place instead,” he says, with his hair pushed out of his hair by a headband and a whole lot of skin on display. “My equipment is better.”

 _Your equipment is something_ , Johnny doesn’t say, because he does have a filter after all.

“I can spot you—there’s no down payment.”

Johnny is too distracted by how fucking pale he is without sleeves to do more than nod along.

On Saturday, Jaehyun makes good on his offer and Johnny ends up working out next to him, trying desperately not to say something stupid like, “I wish you’d worked at Swing with me; things would have been so much more fun,” or “wouldn’t it have been great if we met when we both lived in North America?”

On Sunday, Jaehyun takes Johnny down to see the best part of the beach, hounding him for having “douche sunglasses,” and then quite seriously trying to leave Johnny’s house in a t-shirt that says bullshit like “my other shirt is short.”

“You’re really making fun of my sunglasses when you’re wearing that?” Johnny says once they hit the sand, digging his toes into the heat of it and feeling grateful he took Jaehyun’s advice and got flip flops.

“It could have been worse,” Jaehyun says happily, swinging his shoes in one hand as he walks. “I once saw someone walking around with a shirt that said, ‘Sorry girls, I only date models.’”

Johnny barks out a laugh, and Jaehyun grins. “You’re joking,” Johnny says.

“Am not,” Jaehyun says. “I think it was a set, too, because I also saw him in one that said ‘#Handsome’—with the hashtag like the SNS thing.”

Johnny kicks sand at him. “Yes, I’m not ancient, Jaehyun-ah.”

Jaehyun grins. “I don’t know,” he says. “You’re a different generation.”

Johnny wonders if it would be possible to pick him up and run him close enough to toss into the ocean, but ultimately decides he ought to wait until they’re better friends; it feels like they’ve known each other for forever, but it has only been a little over a week. “Two years,” he says again.

“Different generation,” Jaehyun says again. “Anyway—” He’s interrupted by a woman, rushing past the two of them and nearly taking Jaehyun out in her wake.

Johnny reaches out a hand to steady them both, mouth open to start swearing, but Jaehyun cuts him off by reaching out his own hand to take hers, pulling her to her feet with a wide smile. “Ajumeoni,” he says, bending to pick up the sun hat that’s fallen into the sand off the woman’s gray head. “You dropped this.”

The woman takes the headwear with a wide smile, putting it back on her head without looking away from Jaehyun. “Thank you, Yuno-yah,” she says, patting his hand excessively. “Thank you—”

“Yuno?” Johnny hears himself say, even as Jaehyun steps pointedly on his foot and speaks pointedly out of the side of his mouth.

“My legal name—it’s a long story—I’ll tell you later—”

“And who’s this?” the woman says, still clutching Jaehyun’s hand but turning to face Johnny, now. Johnny wants to take a step back when he sees her eyes—massive behind her own sunglasses and seemingly staring into Johnny’s soul. “Have you found another young man? Yuno-yah.” The woman laughs, booming and quite like how Johnny likes to picture Grandma Suh. She does it right into Johnny’s face, though, so he takes a stumbling step backwards before he can help himself.

“Uh, Johnny Suh, ma’am,” he says, name coming out in almost a stutter. “Nice to meet you—”

“Johnny Suh.” The woman says Johnny’s name with careful over enunciation. “What a nice name. You’re a nice boy. You should keep him, Yuno-yah.”

Jaehyun gives the woman’s hands another quick shake, before pulling away from the hold she has on him, still smiling, although it’s a little brittle now. “Yes—I mean—I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ajumeoni—”

“Oh Yuno-yah,” the woman says. “How many times do I have to tell you? You don’t have to speak so formally with me. Call me Sungmi-noona—”

“Imo,” Jaehyun says instead, ears blushing at the very tips now. “It was good to see you.” He pats her on the hand one last time, and then reaches out to take Johnny by his. “Come on,” he says out of the side of his mouth as he does so, still smiling very, very wide. “Walk faster. Quick. Before she has time to realize she could catch us—”

“Another young man,” Johnny says, as he lets Jaehyun drag him away. “Another young man.” He grins. “How many young men do you have, Jaehyun-ah?”

Jaehyun’s eyes are tight and his mouth is a thin line. “ _None_ ,” he says sharply, before softening when Johnny must suck in a breath. “I mean—there’s nothing wrong—I just don’t—Sungmi-ajumeoni is, erm.” He looks around, clearly searching for the right word. “Strange,” he settles for. “Half the time I think she thinks I’m her grandson. No, his name isn’t Yuno—mine is,” he adds, before Johnny can think too much about it. “My legal name, anyway. It’s a long story—”

Johnny gives his hand a squeeze, and Jaehyun seems to realize that they’re still holding hands, because his ears go even more red, and he very abruptly lets go.

“Oh, um,” he says. “Anyway—so my favorite stretch of beach—”

“Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny says carefully, because it really has only been several days, but he thinks… he wonders… maybe. “I’d have no problem if you had many ‘young men.’” He affords the words air quotes and waits.

Jaehyun’s ears blush even harder, but he meets Johnny’s eyes. “Well, good,” he says. “I mean. We should come out here sometime at night. It’s better. You can’t skinny dip in broad daylight.” He turns away from Johnny and starts walking.

Johnny jogs to keep up with him. “Skinny dipping?” he says loudly, laughing when a woman grabs her child by a hand and starts power walking away from them. “Skinny dipping?” He switches into English because he can; Jaehyun can keep up with him, even when he’s talking way too fast. “Jaehyun-ah.” He swaps back to Korean. “Are you sure my ailing heart could take it?”

Jaehyun snorts and walks closer to Johnny so that their sides brush. “Haven’t you been insisting that it’s only two years?”

Johnny purposefully knocks their shoulders together, and grins.

* * *

Johnny turns twenty-six one month into his stay on Jeju Island and feels… alone. He gets cable and internet and picks up more than a few job applications for things he is more than qualified for on and around the island, but more often than not he spends that month with Jaehyun, whose house is far cheaper than any gym and whose equipment is far nicer. Jaehyun’s still refusing to cook for Johnny, but Johnny likes spending time with Jaehyun, so he doesn’t care. Jaehyun seems to have no qualms about bringing ingredients over for Johnny to mess up, so it’s not like Johnny’s all that strapped for cash, or in desperate need of a paycheck. It’s nice. Johnny feels nice. Until his birthday, when he just feels all alone.

He has a screaming argument with his mother the morning of the ninth itself, ending with Johnny hanging up the phone near tears, and his mother—Johnny doesn’t know why he started yelling at her, only that once he’d started he’d been unable to stop, and a lot of the things he’d said were things he’d been feeling and thinking, but knew better than ever to say.

_Why didn’t you give me any siblings?_

_Why didn’t you fight harder to make me stay in Chicago?_

_Why did you send me all by myself to this stupid house on Jeju Island, instead of coming with me, and helping me make it a home?_

Johnny sets down the phone and covers his face with both hands and yells, doing his best not to be loud enough to attract attention from his neighbors—from Jaehyun—before going to put his phone on silent and leave it unattended on his bed.

He’s twenty-six.

Johnny is twenty-six.

He’s officially closer to thirty than twenty, and that’s using international age. In Korea, Johnny is twenty-seven. Johnny feels stretched thin and miserable.

The doorbell rings.

Johnny blinks.

It’s Jaehyun, because of course it is. His friend doesn’t seem to have noticed he’s come at a bad time, barging into Johnny’s house and taking off his shoes, already talking a mile a minute—he bought a record player, he’ll show Johnny a proper parlor, for dinner tonight Johnny should come over and let him cook and show him his favorite records, my treat.

Johnny looks at him and kind of wants to cry, he’s suddenly so emotional. He says nothing. He stands in the middle of the entryway of his massive mansion holding onto the door and says _nothing_ , only looks at Jaehyun, who’s very rapidly growing concerned, and stops talking.

“Johnny-hyung?” he says finally. “Are you okay?”

“It’s my birthday,” Johnny gets out. “You—I—I thought you said you didn’t cook on the first date?”

Jaehyun blinks but doesn’t wish Johnny happy birthday like a normal person would. “Or the second,” he says. “Or the third—but—Johnny—what?” He drops the “hyung” off that iteration of Johnny’s name, and Johnny wonders how Jaehyun thinks of him—how formally. He swallows.

“Never mind,” he says. “You were telling me about the record player—”

“Johnny-hyung,” Jaehyun says.

Johnny just stares.

“Fine,” Jaehyun says. “Fine—I found it at that secondhand shop by the sandwich shop—you know the one.”

Johnny does, and he’s shocked to realize it; Jeju Island isn’t quite so foreign anymore after all. He wants very suddenly to hug Jaehyun, and it’s stupid. It’s not like Jaehyun brought it up on purpose.

“Hyung.” Jaehyun is staring at him with surprisingly knowing eyes. “You’re not listening to me. Listen. I don’t know what’s going on, but I know a little about messed up birthdays. Mine is on Valentine’s Day.”

Johnny blinks at him, thoughts suddenly in disarray. “Your birthday is on Valentine’s Day?” he says. “Jaehyunnie. That’s this Sunday. That’s so soon.”

Jaehyun rubs at the back of his neck with one hand, clearly embarrassed. “Look, Johnny-hyung, it’s not a big deal. You didn’t know—I don’t like to advertise it. I don’t really celebrate it—”

“Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny says. “Your birthday is on _Sunday_.”

Jaehyun freezes with his hand still clutching the back of his neck. “You’re going to make this a big deal,” he says finally.

“On _Sunday_ ,” Johnny reiterates, with puppy dog eyes, and downturned lips, and his best attempt at aegyo.

Jaehyun sighs. “Fine,” he says. “But only if you let me cook for you tonight, and”—he jabs a finger directly into the center of Johnny’s chest and pokes—“you tell me why you’re upset.”

Johnny opens his mouth to argue, not wanting to get into it, but also not wanting to ruin the mood.

“No buts,” Jaehyun says quickly, still stabbing a finger into Johnny’s sternum. “Come on, Hyung. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. I am cooking for you on the fourth date.”

Johnny narrows his eyes. “What were the first three?”

Jaehyun finally stops poking him and begins counting them off on his fingers. “Monopoly. The beach. That time you came over to use my gym and fucking showed off like a fucker—”

Johnny can’t help but grin, thinking fondly of the look on Jaehyun’s face when Johnny had finished his usual set of core exercises.

Jaehyun is still listing—well past three now but seemingly uncaring. “—the wine shit—more fast food than I can possibly work off, no you are not right and ramyun will never be better than a home cooked meal—skinny dipping.”

Johnny gets all shuddery thinking about how he ended up naked in the ocean with a guy he’s known for almost four weeks, but he doesn’t regret the experience. Jaehyun was something in the moonlight and Johnny had fun. “Are you sure you’re a real medical student?” Johnny says. “You seem terribly bad at math.”

Jaehyun just sticks his tongue at him, pleased. “Whatever,” he says. “I’m cooking. Tell me your damage.”

“I miss my mom, is all,” Johnny says badly, unable to help himself. “Sorry—fuck—sorry—”

“Hyung.” Jaehyun puts a hand on Johnny’s arm, stilling him. “Don’t apologize. I get it. I miss my mom too.”

That’s the first bit of _real_ information that Jaehyun has offered about himself, and Johnny can’t help but latch onto the scrap like a man possessed. “Where is—”

“Seoul,” Jaehyun offers immediately. “With my dad. It’s not North America, but.”

“It’s still a flight,” Johnny says. “It’s still a huge empty mansion.”

Jaehyun smiles at him, pretty and shy. “Yeah,” he says. “So, you’ll come over and let me cook?”

“Only if you let me spoil you on Sunday,” Johnny says.

“Deal,” Jaehyun says, sticking out his hand for Johnny to shake. Then he goes beautifully shy and drags Johnny in for the world’s quickest hug. “Uh, sorry, Johnny-hyung. I’m sure your mom misses you too—you should call her and tell her. She’ll understand.”

He’s out the door and back to his own house before Johnny can do more than digest that sentence, but Johnny still feels his own ears start to burn, and when he goes to splash water on his face in the guest bathroom, there are twin spots of color on the highs of both cheeks.

Oh.

Well.

So that’s. That’s a thing, then.

* * *

Jaehyun’s birthday ends up being pretty similar to Johnny’s birthday. Jaehyun cooks both times, Johnny laughs so hard he nearly snorts beer up his nose both times, but afterwards on Valentine’s Day, Jaehyun shows Johnny to a guest room, grinning, and warns him not to get lost in the bathroom.

Johnny says, “Very funny,” and slams the door in his way too pretty face. Then he takes a shower. He feels warm, and happy, and—fuck—a little bit in love, so a shower is the best solution. A long one, with more than a few rounds of body wash, and maybe a little bit of self-love—just to take the edge off. When he gets out his fingers have started to go a touch pruney, but Johnny just wraps a towel around his waist and stands in front of the mirror with his shaving kit. He’s glad that he had the foresight to bring a change of clothes, said shaving kit, and a toothbrush. He’s not about to shave now, certainly, but standing in front of the mirror laying out the tools lets him feel more than a little in control. He thinks he’s justified in needing control, giving the circumstances.

Jaehyun is… funny. And pretty. Good company. Nice.

Johnny is… warm. And happy. Clumsy. Drunk. More than a little bit in love—

He lays out the razor, then sets down the bottle of shaving cream. He closes his eyes. He opens his eyes. He looks in the mirror. He almost shrieks. There is a man in the mirror, staring straight back at him with his lips pulled up into a snarl. He has coal dark hair and coal dark eyes and a scar under one eye that kind of looks like a rose. In the two seconds it takes for Johnny to see him and almost bite through his own tongue to keep from outright screaming, he’s gone, and then it’s just Johnny in the bathroom, looking terribly frightened, but alone. He doesn’t turn around to make sure, because he isn’t that much of a cliché, but he does spend more time than necessary smoothing serum and moisturizer into his freshly washed skin, before leaving the bathroom and changing into pajamas.

He texts Jaehyun, lounging in the bed with one leg bent, because he’s clearly still a little drunk, and making shadows out of nothing—there’s a painting, hung on the wall by the window and angled just so it shows up in the mirror, and Johnny’s brain is playing drunk tricks on him, clearly.

`Birthday boy-yah`, he says. `Your house is creepy.`

`Your house is creepy`, Jaehyun replies immediately, with far fewer spelling errors. `My house is an aesthetic.`

Johnny has to input that into Naver dictionary, and when he’s done, he finds himself snorting with laughter. `Aesthetically creepy`, he says, sticking with English. `And you bought it like this. I inherited mine from my Grand`—he fumbles the keyboard and hits send—`from grand`—and again, which is embarrassing, because Johnny isn’t really _that_ drunk, just happy—`from a relative`, Johnny ends up with. `I’m allowed.`

`Burn the princess canopy, Johnny-hyung`, Jaehyun says. `You know you want to. I’ll go with you. We can make it a true illegal bonfire on the beach.`

`We’ve got to do something about your thing for breaking the law on beaches late at night`, Johnny says.

`If you wanted to see my naked ass again you just had to ask`, Jaehyun says.

Johnny throws his head back and laughs. `Go to bed, you idiot`, he says. And then, tugging the covers up to his chin and turning off the bedside lamp, `Happy birthday, Jaehyunnie-yah. I’m so glad that I got to know you.`

He tries to go to sleep before he can see what it is Jaehyun’s said in response, but still manages to see when Jaehyun sends him four emoji—a peach (Johnny’s standing by what he said; the man’s ass is like a peach), popping champagne, the beach, and fire. Johnny goes to sleep grinning, utterly content.

He wakes up standing in complete darkness in a bedroom. There’s a bed and a TV, and a canopy that’s even uglier than the monstrosity hiding in a broom closet on the first floor of his own place. Everything is bathed in moonlight, but it’s not the room Johnny went to sleep in, so he must have sleep-walked. Johnny doesn’t think he’s ever sleep-walked before, but the room is completely foreign, so.

He takes a few steps towards the window, pulls open the curtain, and confirms that his house is still across the way. Past the rose bushes and the mountain laurel—Johnny doesn’t remember Jaehyun telling him that was what those were, but he knows, very suddenly, that they are. That’s Johnny’s house, so this must be Jaehyun’s. Although something about the house is off, now that Johnny looks at it. Or the sky? The sky is wrong. The season. Isn’t it… winter?

“Oh great, another one,” says a voice suddenly, and Johnny practically falls over in his haste to turn around. “A new one,” the voice continues, attached to a man—a boy—with dark hair and glasses. He’s not as tall as Johnny and gangly, wearing jean shorts and an oversized t-shirt, and scowling. The more shocking thing is the shoes he’s wearing—red Converse so worn they look like they’re barely hanging on—but inside the house—on Jaehyun’s nice wood floors.

“You,” Johnny manages. “Shoes.”

The boy glances down at his feet briefly, before shaking his head and coming closer to Johnny. “He probably won’t hear me anyway,” he says, which seems weird, since _obviously_ Johnny can hear him—they even just had an exchange! “And if he does… _no English!_ ” That last bit comes out at a volume that makes Johnny’s ears hurt and he claps both hands over them. The kid seems to freeze, eyes darting between Johnny’s face, to his shoes again, then to Johnny’s hands, still covering his ears. “Wait,” he says. “Wait—can you—can you hear me?”

“Uh,” Johnny says, eyes darting around the kid in search of the nearest exit, trying to decide if it’s worth shouting for Jaehyun so that they can call the police or something. This kid must be trying to _burgle_ Jaehyun. Johnny can’t have that. Johnny ought to tackle him. He doesn’t seem to have any weapons—and can’t be more than like twenty, honestly—but Johnny ought to—tackle? “I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about but, _yes_ , _English_ ,” is what Johnny ends up saying, in English. It does absolutely _nothing_ to help the situation.

The burglar kid’s mouth drops open and he stares. “Wait,” he says again. “Wait. You can hear me. You can see me.”

Johnny keeps staring at the burglar kid. “Yeah?” he says finally. “Why wouldn’t I be able to see you? Or hear you?” Maybe he should shout for Jaehyun so that they can call the police _and_ an ambulance; the kid seems incredibly confused.

“Dude,” the burglar kid says. “Dude—Hyung.” He switches languages so quickly Johnny’s brain throbs, and Johnny is bilingual. “What day is it? What season—are you—are you here with Jaehyun-hyung?”

Johnny blinks. The burglar kid knows Jaehyun? Maybe he’s one of Jaehyun’s friends. “Uh,” he says. “February fourteenth? Valentine’s Day?”

“Jaehyun-hyung’s birthday,” the burglar kid says. Clearly, he’s not a burglar, if he knows that much. “Wow.”

“Yeah, um, who are you again—”

“It doesn’t matter.” The kid puts both hands on Johnny’s biceps and stares deep into Johnny’s eyes. Then he takes a deep, purposeful breath and steps closer and closer until Johnny has no choice but to let him get almost nose to nose because there’s nowhere for him to go—only the itch of curtains at his back, and a slice of moonlight coming in the window, making the tips of the kid’s hair almost start to glow. “Hyung,” the kid says. “Hyung. Hyung. _Hyung_.”

Johnny wonders if he’s just putting off a vibe that says he’s old, or something, because on second thought, the kid can’t be _that_ young. “Yes?” he manages, pressing further into the curtain. “Look, nice to meet you, but maybe you should step back—”

“You need to _leave_ , Johnny-hyung,” interrupts the kid and Johnny’s too busy noticing the kid is kind of _pretty_ behind the glasses and the sickly pallor, to notice that he’s called him by his first name.

“What?” he tries to say, and then very suddenly, he’s back in the guestroom he went to sleep in, and the sun is in his eyes. Jaehyun is leaning in the doorway smirking at him with what looks like a full English breakfast balanced on the tray in his hands. Johnny blinks, feeling a little bit like he’s downed several tablespoons of Nyquil, and stares. There’s drool gathering in the corner of Johnny’s mouth. He very quickly wipes at it, clearing his throat. “What—yes—Jaehyun—” That’s… Johnny’s awake, clearly, and back in bed—that was a dream, wasn’t it, a weird, alcohol induced dream about… gosh… Converses? Johnny can’t remember, and his head hurts. He settles for smiling up at Jaehyun. “Good morning,” he tries.

Jaehyun’s lips curve into a much less devious smile. Then he tosses a dishtowel directly into Johnny’s face with his right hand. “Get up, loser, we’re going shopping.”

Johnny can only reach for the terry cloth, too disoriented for the sudden English. “What—”

“You heard me.” Jaehyun’s back to speaking Korean now, and when Johnny drags the towel off his face, he gets to see how Jaehyun is able to keep the tray balanced on one palm with what has to be practiced ease, while he grabs an apple off of it and takes a large, crunching bite with the other. “You clearly need new pajamas,” Jaehyun says. “You’re missing half of yours.”

Johnny looks down at his clearly exposed bare chest and squeaks, dragging the blanket up to his chin again and—fuck—blushing—fuck—he’s. Fuck. What was he doing, before this? Sleeping? Johnny was just—Jaehyun is still smirking at him and chewing happily on his perfectly red apple. Johnny throws the towel back at him and misses horribly. “You—shut up,” he says. “You—haven’t you heard of knocking—”

“It’s my house, Johnny-hyung,” Jaehyun says, although he does retreat out of the doorway a little in case Johnny decides to throw something else at him. There’s only a lamp and his cellphone, and while only one of those things seems like overkill, the other cost way too much for Johnny to risk breaking it open on Jaehyun’s very pretty head.

“Your _creepy house_ ,” Johnny says, pointing wildly at him while still holding the blankets up to cover his—well, not his modesty because Johnny is not a hero in a Victorian novel _thank you very much_ —just. It’s too early in this friendship for—okay that would have held more water if they hadn’t already gone skinny dipping. What is… what is Johnny saying? Why does his head hurt?

“You said that already,” Jaehyun tells him happily, just poking his head in this time. “Now come on. Breakfast. And we really should go shopping. You only wear like three shirts.”

Johnny is appalled and insulted; he brought five shirts when he packed up and moved house and the rest of his wardrobe is just in storage because it was too much of a hassle to fly it to Jeju. “How dare you—”

“Breakfast, Johnny-hyung. And pocari sweat—do you need painkillers? That thing on your arm looks painful. I told you not to get lost in the bathroom, but I really should have said don’t trip and fall in the bathroom.” Jaehyun’s voice tapers off, but Johnny just keeps blinking at the empty doorway, more than a little confused.

“That thing on my arm?” As soon as he asks he feels it, and Johnny hisses and reaches up to rub the skin of his right bicep. The bruise there is purple and ugly and certainly the sort of thing that might have been the product of tripping in Jaehyun’s extremely fancy guest bathroom. Johnny doesn’t remember doing that, but Johnny also doesn’t remember making nearly so many typos when texting Jaehyun the night before. And clearly he did that, since they’re the first thing Johnny sees when he unlocks his phone. He called Jaehyun “Birthday Boy-yah.” Johnny will _never_ live this down.

“Hyung!” Jaehyun shouts. “Breakfast!”

Johnny stops thinking about the bruise on his arm, and goes to put on clothes.


	2. Spring

Jaehyun has to go back for his second year of medical school on March 3, so naturally Johnny decides that he has to drag them out of their mausoleums for one last hurrah the day after Independence Day, when everything on the island is finally open again. He takes to the internet in search of things that they can do, and feeds them to Jaehyun over the course of the weekend before that, lounging about both of their properties watching Jaehyun do not much of anything—reading a book, drinking lemonade like some sort of heiress, and taking care of the almost royal purple flowers in his garden—the morning glory, Johnny thinks Jaehyun says. Jaehyun has been to Mazeland and is intimately familiar with the beach, doesn’t seem particularly inclined towards hiking, and seems unimpressed at the thought of the Planetarium. Johnny pouts and whines at him and does his best not to come on too strong, but at the end of it all, he convinces him.

The Teddy Bear Museum, or Teseum, is clearly the best place for the two of them to go before Jaehyun has to go back to being a full-time student. Obviously. It’s an entire museum and safari dedicated to _teddy bears_. Jaehyun, as Johnny explains happily, is very clearly a teddy bear. He needs to go be with his people.

“Are you sure that’s not just you?” says Jaehyun, as the two of them get on the bus and tap their t-money cards to pay, finding a pair of seats towards the middle and somehow managing to squash together without anyone’s legs ending up too much in the aisle. Jaehyun has it a bit easier than Johnny, who grabbed the window seat before he could think about it, and now has to negotiate between cramming himself up against the glass and touching Jaehyun’s leg.

“Me, what?”

“You who’s the teddy bear,” says Jaehyun, as the bus pulls out into traffic. “I thought I was a peach?”

For some reason Johnny wants to change languages, but he continues in Korean regardless. “You can be both,” he says. “You’re”—saying Jaehyun’s a good pillow would probably be weird—“a good pillow”—fuck; Johnny said it anyway—“is all I’m saying,” Johnny says, with great dignity. “And there wasn’t a peach museum.”

“Mmm.” Jaehyun appears to actually be thinking that over, and Johnny stares.

“Would you have gone to a peach museum?”

Jaehyun inclines his head.

Johnny fights the urge to kiss him. “Yah,” he says instead. “What have you got against stars?”

Jaehyun blinks. “What?”

Johnny fights the urge to _kiss_ him. “The Planetarium—”

“—would have just been an excuse to try to get me to go to a fortune teller,” Jaehyun finishes, before Johnny can continue.

Johnny glares, only blushing a little—maybe it’s more of a pout than a glower. “We’re both Aquariuses,” he says. “Also, it’s _your year_ , Jaehyun-ah—”

Jaehyun halts Johnny with a finger to the center of Johnny’s mouth, and Johnny abruptly stops breathing. Maybe he can play that off as just shock, not… feelings. Fuck, Johnny’s gone and caught feelings. He’s only been on the island for about two months and he’s gone and caught _feelings_ , and for his neighbor to boot. His only neighbor anywhere close to his age, granted, and they have a ton in common—a similar taste in music, a similar zest for the beach, a similar age—no matter how much grief Jaehyun gives him. Jaehyun even lived in the United States for four years; Johnny can complain to him in _English_ , and instead of getting odd looks, he gets sarcasm and good humor right back. It’s nice. Jaehyun’s nice. Johnny would be remiss not to like him.

Johnny _more than likes him_ , which is fine, but. Sungmi-ajumoeni said that Jaehyun had… a young man. Johnny—Johnny wouldn’t be Jaehyun’s young man—more like the—fuck— _reverse_ —but—

Johnny needs to uproot those thoughts right the fuck now.

He swallows and sits back in his seat. “You’re a teddy bear,” he ends up saying. “I am not taking counter arguments at this time.”

Jaehyun’s breath woofs out in the world’s most adorable little snort, but he doesn’t offer any. “Okay,” he ends up saying. “But you’re the one with the teddy bear collection.”

Johnny stares. “You—” he manages.

Jaehyun raises an eyebrow. “Your grandmother’s house is very big, Johnny-hyung,” he says with mock innocence. “How was I to know which closet the dish towels were in—”

“I was very fucking clear!” Johnny says, voice gone very high. “Broom closet! Second door on the right!” He hadn’t—he hadn’t meant to bring the bear collection instead of most of his clothes (still in storage in Seoul waiting for Johnny to get his act together and have them brought to Jeju Island with the rest of his stuff) and he certainly hadn’t meant for Jaehyun to find them; they were shoved in a closet on the ground floor so that Johnny didn’t have to think about the fact that for a good portion of his post-graduate, working life he had to reward himself for basic care shit like “took a shower more than once a week” and “bought groceries instead of ordering take out” with… _bears_. Johnny had always liked bears, and it turned out being alone in a foreign country and at the bottom of a corporate ladder had left Johnny _lonely_ , and bears? Well, bears were— _fuck_ —better than judgmental friends. “I—” Johnny says.

“I rest my case,” Jaehyun says, in time for the bus to reach their stop. “Now come on.” He gets to his feet and has the audacity to grin as Johnny scrambles to do the same. “Let’s go feed your bear fetish.”

Johnny is going to strangle him. They tap their cards one last time as they get off the bus, step around a family of tourists leaving the Teddy Bear Museum laden with things from the gift shop, and Johnny says, more than a little insulted, “I do not have a _bear fetish_!” Unfortunately for Johnny, he uses Korean, the aforementioned family are very clearly Korean, and Jaehyun is an asshole, because he laughs.

Johnny is left sputtering, knowing better than to try to say anything yet still feeling like he ought to, settling for grabbing Jaehyun by his treacherous, stupid hand and hauling him hurriedly towards the museum. “I take it back,” he tells him angrily, aware his face is on fire, but unable to stop it from happening. “You’re not a teddy bear. You’re an evil person—”

“Because teddy bears aren’t evil people,” Jaehyun interrupts, matching stride with Johnny with ease. “Teddy bears are good people—dare I say, _marriable_ people—”

“Teddy bears aren’t people—I do not want to marry a teddy bear!” Johnny hears himself say, because clearly Jaehyun brings out the _worst in him_ , and his self-control has left the building.

Typically, another couple is in the process of leaving the Teseum.

Their faces would be laughable, were they not directed at Johnny.

“You—I—I’m”—Johnny switches into English—“I’m going to get _back at you_ for this,” he tells Jaehyun through gritted teeth. He holds his head high and smiles pleasantly at the couple, who are still frozen with their hands on the doors. “Thank you,” Johnny tells them both, still in English, before dragging a still cackling Jaehyun inside. “Just you wait,” he tells him angrily, also in English. “You’ll regret this—”

“You just make it so very easy, Johnny-hyung,” Jaehyun tells him happily, seemingly without a care in the world. “And I’m shaking in my boots, really.”

Johnny stares pointedly down at Jaehyun’s sandals.

“My metaphorical boots,” Jaehyun corrects.

Johnny narrows his eyes. “I didn’t realize you knew words that big,” he says, and feels no shortage of glee at the color Jaehyun’s ears turn once that barb lands. Jaehyun had—in his defense—really looked quite exhausted around the time Johnny finally determined it was time to go back to his own house that particular weekend. He’d still mixed up his words, blending them together until they were one chimerical monstrosity and making Johnny, who was also very tired, dissolve into unconcealed giggles.

“Shut up—that was one time—”

“Are you feeling sealthy, Jaehyun-ah?” Johnny tells him, finally releasing his hand so that he can head to the front of the museum and pay for admission. “I mean healthy. I mean safe. I mean—”

“I was _tired_ ,” Jaehyun says. “Hyung, come on—Hyung—”

Johnny whirls to look at him, honestly grinning ear to ear. Jaehyun is pink tipped and sputtering, but no less fun to look at or rile up. Johnny is oh so very fucked. “Hey,” he finds himself saying, nudging at Jaehyun’s foot with his own. “I’m glad I moved in next door to you.”

For two seconds Jaehyun’s face goes devoid of all emotion, but then he grins back at Johnny, both dimples on display. “Me too,” he says. “Hey do you want to c—” Johnny misses what he says next, too distracted by their surroundings. There was of course the giant teddy bear on the roof of the building, but Johnny had been too busy defending his honor to really take that in. Now he finally manages to look around, and wow. Bears.

“Sorry, what were you saying?”

Jaehyun’s mouth snaps shut. “Uh, nothing,” he says. “Come on. Let’s go look at the bears.”

“Be among your people,” Johnny corrects, just to watch him blush a little around the edges.

“Yeah, that,” Jaehyun concedes, with a sigh.

Johnny takes it for the win that it is. Then he gets to take home a full color photograph of Jaehyun standing on stage with a polar bear playing the piano, which is far worth the price of admission. “This does not count as me getting back at you for the fetish thing,” Johnny tells Jaehyun loudly in front of a pair of old ladies, slipping his phone back into his pocket and delighting at the look on Jaehyun’s face when both of the women pointedly move away from them. “By the way.”

“I hate you,” Jaehyun tells him.

“I love you too,” Johnny tells him right back, and only stumbles slightly on his next step.

* * *

“Here.”

Jaehyun stares.

“Now we’re even.”

Jaehyun _stares_.

Johnny feels itchy all over and has to fight the urge to scratch. “Look, it’s clear to me you have absolutely zero shame—”

Jaehyun’s mouth drops open in sputtering, startled laughter, so Johnny rushes to keep speaking.

“—so I’ve decided to just _bribe_ you,” he finishes. “That’s that record you wanted, right?” He’s suddenly worried it’s not—and how embarrassing would that be. Johnny had to go some dark places on the internet for that, not because it was all that rare, or anything, but more because he still didn’t technically have a job and needed it to be cheap. He kept meaning to get a job, but things kept coming up. And it wasn’t like Jaehyun was going to let him starve. Perhaps Johnny ought to have had second thoughts about how much trust he was putting in this almost complete stranger, but it was _Jaehyun_ , who Johnny determined was about as harmless as a baby kitten—fluffy, fussy, but without fully grown claws. Johnny had always been a good judge of character. And honestly half the reason he hadn’t gotten a job was because he wasn’t ready to admit to his mother that this house—this move—had been exactly what he’d needed after all. He had called her the moment he’d gotten home from celebrating Jaehyun’s twenty-fourth birthday and had a good cry, but there were just miles and several time zones between them and he missed her, is all.

Jaehyun is staring at Johnny with large eyes, mouth still partly fallen open. Johnny worries he’s been spacing out for far too long.

“Well, it’s yours now,” he says. “So, you can leave my stuffed animals out of it.”

Jaehyun closes his mouth, looks down at the LP, and tightens his grip on it. “Hyung,” he says. He sounds—he sounds funny, and Johnny is normally perfectly happy to shout his emotions from the treetops, but for some reason he doesn’t want to make a huge fuss. Maybe it’s because he knows Jaehyun, for all his sensitivity and surprising amount of empathy, is a much less demonstrative person than Johnny is.

“No more bears, Jaehyun-ah,” he says. “You’re welcome.”

Jaehyun clenches his jaw, and then he seems to shake his tension off. “That’s too bad,” he says, and there’s only the slightest bit of warble to his voice. “I only have twenty or so bears hidden in my garage.” At Johnny’s stunned silence he says, “It’s possible I was planning something for April Fools.”

Johnny reaches for the record, but Jaehyun is too quick. “Ah ah,” he says. “It’s mine. You gave it to me.”

“I’m taking it back,” Johnny says. “I take it back. No more truce. I’m going to find the one thing you can’t stand for anyone to know about and _put it on the eight p.m. SBS News_.”

Jaehyun just tucks his brand-new LP to his chest like he would a football and books it, disappearing back into his house leaving only laughter in his wake.

Johnny stares after him, charmed despite himself.

“Are you coming?” Jaehyun shouts from the other room. “I’d say dinner is getting cold but—”

“You know, one of these days you’ll cook for me again,” Johnny tells him happily, leaving his shoes in the entryway and closing the door behind himself. Jaehyun’s answer is lost to the distance between them in the giant house, but Johnny doesn’t really care. He feels… happy. Content. This move really was the best decision for him.

* * *

The first thing Johnny realizes is that he’s not inside Jaehyun’s house anymore. That’s not too weird, since he’s obviously dreaming, and Johnny doesn’t see why he would be dreaming about being inside Jaehyun’s house anyway. Not that Johnny knows for sure that the last dream took place in Jaehyun’s house. He won’t lie; some part of him has been avoiding staying over again because of the dream, even though he can’t really _remember it_ —which, honestly, was the most unsettling thing about it. Not that Johnny has ever really remembered his dreams—he doesn’t, more than half the time—just. He felt like he should have remembered this one, for some reason. Like it was important. Certainly important enough that he should remember more of it than he does—the weird bedroom, seeing his own house out the window, and the shoes. Dirty red sneakers, with the laces loose and untied.

But Johnny’s had plenty of opportunities to explore more of Jaehyun’s house since Valentine’s Day a month ago, and he hadn’t found anything resembling that room. Never mind that he very purposefully avoided anywhere that might have a view of his own home at that same angle—Johnny is pretty sure it was just a weird alcohol-induced dream, and nothing more. Jaehyun liked much more expensive wine than Johnny ever could have afforded back in Seoul, anyway.

The second thing is… Johnny knows he’s in Jaehyun’s garden. He doesn’t know how he knows, but he does. In his gut, underneath all the other emotions and… other things—Johnny knows that this is Jaehyun’s garden. The sky is an angry swirl of grey—the sort of weather than Johnny expects to be able to taste. It’s not raining, but Johnny wouldn’t be surprised if rain was coming. Johnny feels vindicated, looking at it. The world should be just as sad as he is, at present. The world should be just as angry. Johnny is oh so, so very angry.

And choking?

Johnny is—

Johnny is holding garden shears.

Johnny is holding garden shears?

Johnny is crying, ugly, unattractive crying—although all crying is ugly, isn’t it, Johnny can’t help but think, in some sort of weird, out of body, near-death experience.

Johnny is—

Jaehyun is very suddenly in front of Johnny, but he looks wrong.

Different.

_Younger?_

Johnny squints, tightens his grip on the shears, and—

“Baby—”

“Don’t _call_ me that,” Johnny says, but his voice comes out all wrong. Like a howl. Like a wound. Like he’s been screaming himself hoarse for days, only that can’t be, because Johnny isn’t shouting much of anything right now with his throat stuffed full of—

Johnny coughs, suddenly, and can’t seem to find air.

Jaehyun comes closer. “Hyung—”

For some reason the word makes Johnny want to laugh, but he can’t seem to find the oxygen to do so. “You’re such a piece of work, Jaehyunnie,” he says instead, because he’s still so angry, suddenly. So angry that he can’t see straight, in between the tears, and all the pain. The pain is in his throat and in his chest under his heart, and Johnny doesn’t understand, really. Everything is still so confusing.

“Hyung,” Jaehyun says again, and gets closer. “Hyung”

And Johnny—

Stabs.

Him.

The shears are the small kind you can fit in one hand and haven’t gone in too deeply, yet they’re—they’re _in_ Jaehyun regardless, sticking out of the bit of flesh to the left side of his unfairly cute outie belly button. (But Johnny doesn’t know that Jaehyun has an outie belly button, does he? They went—skinny—to fly kites on the beach—dipping.) There’s blood sticking to Johnny’s fingers and everything has gone all hazy around the edges of Johnny’s vision, like he’s still choking. But he’s not choking, is he? He thinks he’d remember, but maybe it’s been too long without oxygen.

He’s shaking, he’s still crying, and now Jaehyun is _bleeding_. (This must be how Jaehyun got that scar. Jaehyunnie doesn’t have a scar.)

Johnny doesn’t know what to do.

Johnny _doesn’t know what to do_.

Johnny tries to let go of the shears, tries to pull out the shears, sucks in great gulping gasps of air that do _nothing_ , because his lungs are so run through with—with—with—

“Now, Hyung, come on,” says Jaehyun. He closes his hand around Johnny’s, seemingly utterly unbothered by the fact that Johnny _stabbed him_ and he’s _bleeding all over everything_. “What kind of attempt was that?”

Jaehyun is… making fun of him? Johnny could just _fight him_. Johnny _hates him_ , only he doesn’t, which is the problem.

“You need to _commit_ , Hyung.” Jaehyun keeps talking, and actually steps closer; holds tight to Johnny’s bloody, sticky fingers so he can’t escape.

Johnny squeaks, chokes on something that tastes remarkably like ash and perfume when it could only be snot, or something, not _anything else_ , but Jaehyun’s grip is too strong for him to break. “Jaehyunnie-yah,” he says.

“Let’s try that again,” Jaehyun says, and then he pulls the shears out of himself, holding Johnny’s hand the whole time. It… squishes.

Johnny yelps, back pedals rather desperately, but Jaehyun is so much stronger, so much taller.

“One,” Jaehyun says, and drives the shears back into his own stomach with Johnny’s hand clutched in his own. “Two—”

There’s—blood—

“Three—”

Johnny’s going to throw up—Johnny’s only been throwing up—Johnny—

“Four—”

Johnny wakes up, chest heaving, lying spread eagle in the middle of his usual guest bed, a peaceful, island breeze wafting through his curtains and swirling around the room. He’s slept in a t-shirt and boxers this time, and both of them are soaked almost all the way through with sweat. His door is wide open, the creaking from it colliding with the door stop clearly what woke him up, and from downstairs, he can hear—grunting? The sound very slowly translates into an exercise DVD and Jaehyun exercising, the words of the trainer reforming as numbers in Johnny’s ears.

“—five—six—seven—”

Johnny peels himself out of the bed, hauls his disgusting excuse for a t-shirt off and balls it up to stuff into his bag to take back home. Then, after glancing nervously around, he ditches the boxers as well.

“—nine—ten—good—and stretch—”

The dream was weird, but Johnny had more of Jaehyun’s weird wine the night before. They’d been watching horror movies. Shit that Johnny stupidly told Jaehyun wouldn’t bother him, and still had him half-buried in the man’s back by the end regardless. The film was tame by Jaehyun’s standards and ended with the heroine getting out alive and then some, but Johnny still went to bed telling himself he was a grown man and asking Jaehyun to stay with him was weird and inappropriate; it had been three months, not three years.

Still—a shower. Or maybe just a rinse. Johnny grabs clean clothes and his toothbrush and passes by the garden shears sitting innocuously on the dresser without even noticing them, all his attention focused on getting less sweaty.

He finds the shears after he’s done a bare minimum soap and rinse, coming forward hesitantly and then laughing at himself, because they’re not the same shears from his dream. They’re too new and the color of the handle is all wrong. Jaehyun must be leaving them there for Johnny as a not-so-subtle hint that their next—not date—outing should be in the garden. Jaehyun’s garden is lovely, but Johnny has never had much of a green thumb. Still, it could be fun. Sun, time together, Jaehyun getting his hands all dirty with potting soil, some of it ending up on the slope of his nose…

Johnny gives himself a vicious rub down with his towel and goes to get dressed.

Jaehyun is in the living room in front of his fancy television when Johnny comes down and finds him, wearing a sleeveless workout shirt and leggings, looking unfairly put together for what has to have been a pretty decent work out, given his biceps and well sculpted abdominals. “Sorry, did I wake you?” he says, mid-stretch with one arm pulled behind his back. He’s got his hair pushed out of his eyes with one of those three-dollar plastic headbands, and he’s sweating.

Johnny very carefully picks his way around him in search of food in the kitchen, finding a glass of water that was probably Jaehyun’s and throwing back its entire contents.

“No, help yourself, that wasn’t mine at all,” Jaehyun says once he’s done, still stretching, but looking more than a little bemused by Johnny stealing his drink.

Johnny just grins around the glass, finishing his last sip. “Sorry,” he says with a gasp, once he’s done, but even he doesn’t believe himself.

Jaehyun is still just standing there with his arm pulled behind his back but his hair is damp, and his cheeks are pink from exertion. As Johnny stares, he releases his arm and pulls the hem of his shirt up to wipe at his face, giving Johnny an unfair refresher on the aforementioned well-sculpted abdominals. Johnny just took a shower. He has no business getting hot and bothered over Jaehyun’s fucking abdominals. He turns to refill the glass, telling himself it’s just the heat, or something—leftover thirst from the fucking dream. But speaking of the dream. “Hey, so, no more weird wine.”

Johnny shuts off the faucet and turns to face Jaehyun, finding that the other has left the living room to take up residence at one of the barstools in his kitchen, headband off and hair falling in both eyes. He tosses the sweaty strands out of them a moment later, tugging the cheap bit of interlocking plastic over his head in the next, leaving his bangs pushed off his forehead. His roots are darker, and Johnny doesn’t think it’s because of the sweat; Jaehyun dyes his hair, clearly, but Johnny. There’s something about how Jaehyun looks with the golden ends of his hair directly contrasting with the rest of it.

“Mmm?” Jaehyun asks, dropping both hands on the table and then giving his head a last little shake. “Weird wine?”

“Weird wine,” Johnny repeats, not about to be cowed. “It keeps making me have weird dreams.”

There’s a mild silence. Jaehyun’s face flashes through several unreadable expressions, before ending on the one Johnny has come to learn precedes teasing. “Oh?”

“Shut up,” Johnny tells him. “They’re not”— _nightmares_ , he thinks, but doesn’t say—“they’re just weird, like. I stabbed you with some garden shears.”

Jaehyun’s mouth falls open, his good humor abruptly vanishing behind what Johnny would almost have said was a mask, were it not gone so quickly after that he must have imagined it. “Is my cooking that bad?” he says and casts his gaze to the bit of breakfast he’s left sitting on the stove for Johnny.

Johnny feels the tension go out of his shoulders in one great gust, dropping both elbows down onto the countertop and letting his back go concave. He gives Jaehyun a considering look, trying not to notice the way Jaehyun’s eyes flick briefly to the sudden arch of Johnny’s ass—that’s—interesting. “If I say ‘yes,’ are you more likely to keep doing it anyway? You know, out of spite; you’re a competitive bastard, Jeong Jaehyun, don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

Jaehyun snickers, dropping his chin into one hand and hiding the bottom half of his mouth. He has the faintest little birthmark on his left cheek, and Johnny suddenly has the urge to drink even more water. “And I haven’t even made you my special dish, yet,” Jaehyun says.

Johnny blinks. “You have a special dish?”

Jaehyun nods. “Yep,” he says.

Johnny waits, and waits, and sighs. “And it is…”

“Watermelon salad,” Jaehyun says immediately, which was not at all what Johnny had been expecting, honestly.

“Watermelon salad?” he manages. “Really?”

Jaehyun’s ears have gone red, but he nods. “Yes—”

“Does that even require any skill?” Johnny can’t help but ask. “I was thinking it’d be something with meat. Watermelon salad. Isn’t that just chopping fruit and vegetables?”

Jaehyun’s adorably blushing ears are really making Johnny’s morning, and given he’s still a little shaky due to his subconscious’s interpretation of Jaehyun’s exercise DVDs, he thinks he’s justified in doing his utmost to make him blush more. “Hyung—”

“I mean I know chopping requires some skill with a knife but come on, Jaehyun, please.” He can’t help but notice how pretty Jaehyun looks, backdropped by the flowers, the view out to the back of Jaehyun’s yard unhindered by anything else inside the room. “Although maybe gardening—” He thinks suddenly of the shears. “Hey, you could just ask me to garden with you, if you wanted, instead of leaving tools in my room—” There’s a beep that can only be Johnny’s phone, and he straightens off the countertop immediately, turning to pull the thing out of his pocket and clicking it unlocked. “Sorry. My mom.”

Jaehyun’s saying something about not having asked Johnny to garden with him but Johnny’s distracted, grinning down at the selfie his mother has sent him of her and his father.

“Hey, say cheese.” Johnny leans around to get them both in the frame and makes a happy peace sign, snapping his own selfie.

Jaehyun’s mouth shuts instantly when he hears the camera go off, but before Johnny can send the photo, Jaehyun’s grabbed his phone and closed out of KakaoTalk, flicking through the various screens on Johnny’s phone with ease, before setting it down face down on the countertop.

Johnny can only stare, his own mouth falling open. “Hey—”

“So, you said you wanted to go shopping?” Jaehyun says, with a wide grin, like nothing’s happened.

Johnny keeps staring. “You—I—”

Jaehyun just smiles harder, both dimples twin craters in his cheeks, and reaches out with a finger to poke Johnny right on the tip of his nose.

Johnny goes cross eyed to keep watching his finger. “Sure,” he says.

* * *

They go to Jeju’s underground shopping mall. They spend a terrible amount of time buying Johnny clothes he doesn’t need, and get large, fruity drinks they can slurp out of straws. Johnny picks up some skin care at the Nature Republic, getting help from two over-eager salespeople while Jaehyun stands next to him with his unfairly perfect skin and says shit like, “Oh, I just use cleansing oil after I’ve done anything… strenuous,” all while making uncomfortable eye contact with Johnny. It somehow ends up feeling more date-like than any of the other things he and Jaehyun have done, and they went to a museum of teddy bears.

It’s on their way back, just on the subway platform, that Johnny first sees the flyers, worn and aged and depressing, once he reads them. They’re missing persons flyers for a Lee Donghyuck, who Johnny learns went missing two years ago in April, but the only reason they catches his attention is because of the woman, standing in front of them arguing with a group of rowdy teenagers who clearly had been trying to put something over them—advertisements for some band show they’re doing, Johnny determines after using his height to his advantage. She’s—Johnny can see the resemblance between her face and the boy on the poster—the teenager, Johnny realizes. Lee Donghyuck would only have been twenty this year—twenty-one, by Korean standards. That’s so sad.

“Yah, Hyung,” Jaehyun says suddenly, dragging Johnny out of his thoughts. “What are you looking at?” He’s following Johnny’s line of sight already regardless, zeroing in on the commotion without any trouble. “Oh.”

Johnny swings his bags between them and turns to look down at Jaehyun. “Nothing—you were saying—”

“You can ask,” Jaehyun interrupts him. “It’s not that big of an island.”

“It kind of is that big of an island,” Johnny tells him quietly, but he won’t lie, he’s curious. He bites his lip. “Did you know—”

“No,” Jaehyun says. “But he went missing in 2019.”

“Two years ago,” Johnny says.

Jaehyun nods. “I’ve seen _her_ a lot though,” he says. “Putting up posters.”

As they watch, one of the miscreants very badly covers up an eyeroll, and Lee Donghyuck’s mother raises her pitch in rage, her hands on her hips and the rapid-fire of her words only serving to make Johnny miss home more, as odd as that is. He shouldn’t miss his mother nagging him—all she does lately, it seems, is nag him—but he does. He misses sitting on the porch watching his father grill meat, misses being dragged to family gatherings and turned into the butt of every story, every joke, every reminiscence of the time he was young and beautiful and his mother would take him places and people would stare. Johnny misses home and his family, and feels selfish for doing so.

“—yah, Ahjumma—” Whatever the spotty teenager in the orange t-shirt had intended to say is lost when the woman turns her ire more directly on him, and the boy falls back against his friends, suitably cowed. Johnny probably could figure out what she’s saying, but somehow that just feels… invasive. And likely to make him start crying—it’ll have been two years, very soon. Two years of nothing.

“What”—he swallows—“What happened, do you know?”

Jaehyun steps close enough to share air, the waft of his cologne distracting Johnny from everything for a second. “I don’t.” He pauses, thinking. “I mean he went missing,” he says finally. “He just… never came home, I guess.” He shrugs, and Johnny feels bad for a second—it really is a big island, but Jaehyun offered. “I think…” Jaehyun appears to be searching for the right words, or maybe just the kindest ones. “She has three other children,” he says, so maybe it’s not that big of an island, or missing children are the sort of thing that you don’t forget, even if you only run into their missing poster once or twice. “It might have taken her a while to notice.”

Johnny slants a look at him. “Jaehyun-ah,” he says, with only half an eye on Lee Donghyuck’s mother, who finally seems to have finished her tirade. “Are you sneaking out on the weekends to gossip with old ladies doing”—he stops talking, trying to think of something for them to be doing and coming up blank—“uh—”

Jaehyun stares at him with his mouth parted in a smile, one brow slowly raising.

“Never mind,” Johnny says, looking away quickly to focus on the woman again. The teenagers have all moved off, the boy in orange raising one hand in a lazy wave. Lee Donghyuck’s mother just watches them go with her hands clenched into fists, breathing hard. Johnny notices that she has more posters in her hands, the paper shaking a little because of her emotions. “Two years is a long time.”

Jaehyun follows his gaze. “Yeah.” As they watch, the woman shuts her eyes briefly and then seems to rise, turns to face the poster with the photos of her son—one of them a class photo—at twenty, he’d have just graduated high school, Johnny realizes—and one of them obviously digital—two years added on top of what was clearly a very attractive face. The Lee Donghyuck in the photos is smiling, happiness stretched across both cheeks in honest joy. Johnny’s chest aches watching it, Lee Donghyuck’s mother’s fingers sliding over the skin of the boy’s cheek, before she abruptly turns and zeroes in on the nearest group of people waiting for the train.

“This is us,” Jaehyun says rather redundantly, as their own train arrives with a wash of noise. “Come on.”

Johnny follows him off of the platform and into the cabin, heart thumping. He lets Lee Donghyuck’s mother get swallowed up by the rest of the crowd and resolves to do more than just text his own mom back on occasion. Grandma Suh’s mansion is starting to feel much more like Johnny Suh’s mansion, and he really does owe her a proper Facetime. And there’s… all the unsolicited job advice that Johnny’s been cutting off at the pass with excuses—often legitimate; Johnny can find no shortage of reasons to go over to Jaehyun’s, even if lunch after three is odd, and so is running next door because he’s just thought of a joke he’d like to tell his neighbor. He should let her say her piece, even if that piece is disapproval over the fact that Johnny’s seriously considering going back to school.

Not that he needs to. He’s perfectly hirable, and his superiors from his former job have been more than willing to write him glowing recommendations. Just… maybe it’s something about being around Jaehyun, who always seems so carefree, despite what is shaping up to be a grueling year of medical school. He has the most beautiful garden and while Johnny still hasn’t found time to watch him do anything with it, he knows he takes great care of it. And Johnny had always thought about doing something with photography, before settling on business.

“Johnny-hyung?” Jaehyun leans close to Johnny again with honest worry in his eyes, and Johnny rallies a smile.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’ve made everything depressing.”

Jaehyun’s dimples pop out. “It’d be weird if you hadn’t,” he says. He takes a moment, almost like he’s working himself up to speak, or something, but more likely he’s just thinking and Johnny’s just reading into every little thing. “Lee Donghyuck is sad.”

Johnny gives the bag in his lap a purposeful rustle. “You know what else is sad?” he manages. “The looks on those women’s faces when you came up to us in the store looking like you do.”

Jaehyun drops his gaze to the Nature Republic logo and blinks, the picture of honest confusion.

“Your skin, asshole,” Johnny says, and takes great joy at the shocked look that gets him from one of the women on the train.

Jaehyun just keeps blinking at him, but with much less believable innocence this time. “I just use cleansing oil,” he says.

“I will murder you and bury you in your garden,” Johnny says, which really isn’t all that funny, but for some reason has Jaehyun barking out a startled, braying laugh. It turns out no matter of pretty skin can make that sort of faux pas okay, so the rest of the trip is spent swallowing giggles together, trying not to make eye contact with anyone else on the train, lest they dissolve into even more disruptive amusement.

* * *

Johnny doesn’t really remember the details of the next dream. It’s weirder than the other two, but nobody dies, so Johnny’s counting it as a win. He still wakes up disoriented, lying in the bed in Jaehyun’s guest room trying to figure out if the man in the dream with him was speaking a made up language, or something Johnny ought to know after eight or so years in a foreign country. The man had certainly been disappointed, regardless, staring up at Johnny from behind a curtain of pretty, dark hair and frowning, firing off rapid fire sentences in his strange language. He’d had piercings in both ears and no qualms about getting right up in Johnny’s face, but whatever it is he’d been saying was lost on Johnny. None of it had sounded like words. All of it had left Johnny unsettled.

He lies in bed, holds his phone over his nose, and sounds out the words, typing them pointlessly into an internet browser like that’ll help. He’s still doing that when Jaehyun wanders in a few minutes later, though he does look up and smile when he sees him. Jaehyun crawls into the bed beside Johnny and Johnny thinks for a moment that it should be weird—too fast—but no. No, that’s fine, that’s nice, that’s good, that he’s made such a good friend in only three-ish months. And he and Jaehyun are good friends, even if Johnny also had more than a few ill-timed, not weird dreams about Jaehyun, without any garden shears or blood, just… other fluids.

Jaehyun lies beside Johnny in the bed and says nothing; that’s the sort of relationship they have. Then he flips onto his side. “What are you doing?”

Johnny darts a glance at him and fights the urge to throw his phone out the window. Jaehyun’s in sweats and a black t-shirt with a wide, wide neck and his collarbones are like snow, despite the island’s rapid descent into near-summer heat. His hair is soft and fluffy and pushed off his forehead with that same headband again. (Maybe he only has the one, which is not cute.) He’s got dimples. He’s lounging in Johnny’s bed like he belongs there, and not in a ‘this is my house and you are my guest’ sort of way. Johnny’s throat goes dry. “Nothing,” he croaks out. “I mean, I had a dream—”

Jaehyun’s gaze drops to Johnny’s own collarbones, but Johnny’s not wearing an indecently stretched out t-shirt. In fact he’s shirtless (and much less self-conscious about that fact than he should be).

“It’s not important,” Johnny says. “Your house is the common denominator, though.”

Jaehyun dimples at him. “Is this your way of asking me to come over, Johnny-hyung?” he says, although it’s much closer to a purr.

Johnny lowers his phone to stare at him, trying to figure out if that’s an invitation—surely it—surely it’s not—before returning to his frantic research on the possibly made up language from his dream. He finds himself muttering out the sounds again, tapping in hangul characters and then swapping keyboards with a growl—

“Are you speaking Japanese?” Jaehyun says suddenly, interrupting Johnny’s ire.

Johnny shuts his mouth and lets his phone drop onto his chest with a—painful—thud.

“No, wait, don’t tell me,” Jaehyun says, pointing at him with one hand. He starts his own muttering, which sounds remarkably similar to Johnny’s. “It’s”—Johnny is too busy getting distracted by just how pretty Jaehyun’s mouth is, what the fuck—“Osaka!” Jaehyun says emphatically, still pointing. “Kansaiben.”

Johnny keeps staring at him.

“You’re speaking Kansaiben,” Jaehyun says happily, seemingly ready to rest now that he’s figured it out. “When did you visit Japan?”

“I’ve never visited Japan,” Johnny says, picking up his phone again and then pausing. He’s not sure what it is he should even search for. “You’re sure—”

“I had a friend from Osaka,” Jaehyun says airily. “I’m sure. You were speaking Kansaiben. You were _cursing_ in Kansaiben.”

Johnny would tend to agree. The man was certainly angry, and now that Johnny devotes time to it, now that Johnny _thinks harder about it_ , at the end, just before Johnny woke up, he managed to switch into Korean. His voice was rough and hoarse from all the earlier near-shouting but he—there had been sense to his words. Johnny—Johnny drops his phone onto his bare chest again with a groan, rolling onto his own side to appraise Jaehyun, resting his own cheek in one palm, and trying not to notice how Jaehyun’s eyes definitely dip to stare briefly at all of Johnny’s exposed bits of chest and neck. “Again,” he says. “Your creepy house is the common denominator.”

Jaehyun reaches out with a finger to poke Johnny in the center of his bottom lip. “I think you mean your creepy brain is the common denominator,” he says, then rather abruptly seems to go shy, ears blushing when he realizes he’s got his _finger_ in the _center_ of Johnny’s _bottom lip_. He pulls his hand back slowly. “I’ve had plenty of other people stay in my house. None of them had weird murder dreams.” And now he’s making a face on top of looking shy, like something about this conversation has upset him.

Johnny feels the urge to defend himself—to rectify his mistake. To assure Jaehyun that he loves spending time in his house, honestly; the dreams aren’t a deal breaker. “They aren’t all weird murder dreams,” he starts with. “And there’s probably a perfectly normal explanation—one that _doesn’t involve your precious wine_.”

Jaehyun shoots him a slightly haughty look, but doesn’t say anything, so Johnny keeps going.

“I probably just, uh, ran into some people from Osaka, and my brain picked up on that.” He’s grasping for straws, but the longer he lies here staring at Jaehyun, the more the realizes he’s _lying here staring at Jaehyun_ , and not wearing a shirt, not having brushed his teeth, and finding it increasingly difficult to remember why he shouldn’t just lean in and kiss the man. “Isn’t that a thing?” Johnny says, more than a little desperately. “Everyone who shows up in our dreams are just faces we’ve seen and can’t remember, or something, I—maybe that was in that movie. _Inception_ , um. I’m not having dreams within dreams, though.”

Johnny is rambling. Jaehyun seems to have that effect. He’s also an asshole who seems perfectly content to just watch Johnny dig his own grave with a fucking _dimple_ cut into one cheek.

“I probably just ran into a group of tourists from Osaka and now I’m dreaming about it,” Johnny says. “I mostly spend my time with just you. My subconscious is probably compensating, or something.” He tries a smile.

Jaehyun smiles back. “Is this your way of asking for me to spend less time with you on top of asking me to come over, Johnny-hyung?” he says. “Because that’s a little bit of an oxymoron, don’t you think?”

Johnny repeats the Korean word back at him, blinking.

Jaehyun’s brow furrows, and he gestures at Johnny’s phone. He spells it out slowly, and they both blink down at Naver dictionary.

“Oxymoron,” Johnny reads. “Hey.”

Jaehyun just shrugs. “My house is giving you weird dreams and so is my company.”

Johnny realizes that kind of is what he had been saying—or at least implying—and hurries to correct himself. “Oh, fuck, _no_ , Jaehyunnie, I _love_ spending time with you even if your house is a little bit creepy—I mean mine’s creepy too, but why do architects put so many bedrooms in these places, anyway, like, who wants to raise a massive family in an industrial-sized mansion—”

Jaehyun puts a finger back on Johnny’s mouth again, and this time leaves it there even after Johnny has gone silent, and they’re both intimately aware of the fact that it would take no effort at all for Johnny to set his tongue to the skin there, lick over the pad of Jaehyun’s finger and taste salt, skin, and lust. “Johnny-hyung.” Jaehyun’s voice is doing something funny and Johnny thinks that’s okay because Johnny’s heart is also doing something funny, like falling in love too soon. “I’m joking.” He’s got dimples—his eyelashes are so very long. “I like—love spending time with you too.”

“Oh.” Johnny has never really been a blusher, but fuck. “I mean, obviously me too.” Jaehyun’s index finger is still pressed up against Johnny’s lips and he’s just speaking around it, totally at ease, totally not panicking, totally not thinking about salt and skin and sea.

“Yeah.” Jaehyun takes his hand back and hides it behind his neck, rubbing the skin there in something of a self soothe.

“So, what did you want to do today?” they both say, almost in unison, and then the tension breaks when they burst into simultaneous laughter, falling back against the bed with much more ease.

“Overwatch?” Jaehyun says.

“Overwatch,” Johnny concedes, even though they’re both adults, and Jaehyun is a full-time medical student. (Even though Johnny needs to get a job, and Jaehyun is a full-time distraction.)

* * *

Johnny opens his eyes and finds himself standing in an unfamiliar room in what is definitely still Jaehyun’s house and groans, throwing his hands to the ceiling and then turning to address it as well. “Jaehyun-ah,” he says rather pointlessly, since this is all the workings of his people-deprived subconscious anyway. “Your house is giving me fucking _nightmares_.” _And your body is giving me wet dreams_ , he doesn’t add, because he jerked off in the shower just before going to bed that night.

“You must be scared of literally _nothing_ ,” a voice says rather suddenly, and Johnny whirls and drops both hands. There is a boy sitting at a table in front of him, dressed in what looks like a school uniform. He’s got dark hair and healthy-looking cheeks and somehow manages to look down his nose at Johnny, even with the size discrepancy. Not in a mean way; more like how the smart kids would sometimes look when faced with their less intellectually endowed peers. Johnny has to do a double check to make sure _he’s_ not suddenly in a school uniform and eighteen-years-old again. “I’m not Jaehyun, by the way,” the kid adds, since Johnny hasn’t said anything else. “Hyung.” He pulls a face. “Jaehyun-hyung.”

Johnny flicks his eyes down to the board game set in front of the kid, and then back up over his chest to his face. “Uh,” he says.

“Sit.” The kid gestures at an empty chair, before pushing it away from the table with one foot. He’s got shoes on inside too, and Johnny opens his mouth to point that out. “Play.”

Johnny has absolutely no idea how to play whatever game is on the table. Go? Maybe? “I don’t—”

“ _Play_ ,” says the kid in a much more menacing tone, and Johnny very quickly hurries to seat himself across from him. When this is over and he’s awake, he’s going to do extensive research into lucid dreaming and also how to wake himself up.

“I don’t know how to play,” Johnny tells the kid in a hurry. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” The kid waves a hand in a move that is eerily similar to Jaehyun. “I didn’t either. I’ll teach you.” Then he launches into a series of instructions that leaves Johnny’s mouth hanging open, the words going in one ear and out the other. Finally, the kid stops talking, his mouth turning up at the corners. He looks utterly mischievous, and teasing. “You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you,” he says.

Johnny really needs to get a handle on this whole lucid dreaming stuff ASAP, because how dare his own subconscious make fun of him. “I’m asleep—”

“Yeah, this is stupid,” the kid says. “Give me your head.”

Johnny shuts his mouth. “Give you my head?” he says, around the same time the kid reaches across the table and takes hold of Johnny’s face with both hands.

“This should totally work. Worst case scenario, you’ll just know what it’s like to have three annoying little siblings and never have gotten off this godforsaken island.”

“Wait, what—”

“Shh. I’m concentrating.”

“On _what_ —” But very suddenly Johnny knows exactly what and also knows how to play Go. Intimately. Skillfully. He’s definitely watched more than a few videos of professional players, frantically in between—babysitting his annoying little siblings—visits to—somewhere—someone—Jaehyun-hyung?—Johnny shakes his head. “What the fuck—”

“There,” the kid says, looking pleased. “Play.”

Johnny plays.

* * *

“So,” says the kid, ten moves in. “You’re in love with Jaehyun-hyung.”

Whatever semblance of peace Johnny had managed to find while playing Go with a figment of his imagination in the middle of the night vanishes, and he fumbles the stone in his hand. The kid just stares, waiting for him to take his turn, and to answer his question.

“Um, yeah,” Johnny decides finally, since this is, as stated, a figment of his imagination, so lying probably wouldn’t be the best course of action. He makes his move.

The kid sighs and goes to take his own turn. “I can’t judge,” he says. “I mean I want to, but that would be hypocritical.”

Johnny nods, not at all understanding.

“I’m in love with him too.” The kid pulls a face, cheeks pinking. “I mean I was—I mean—never mind. It’s your turn.”

Johnny turns his attention to the scope of the board, thinking. The kid’s very good at Go, but Johnny might be better. Maybe. It’s dream logic.

“Go,” says the kid, and the irony is not lost on Johnny.

* * *

“You should stop being in love with Jaehyun-hyung,” says the kid, twenty moves in.

Johnny nearly takes out the entire board on accident; there had been very little talking the last ten turns, both of them moving pieces, but neither of them feeling up for verbal sparring. On Johnny’s part, that was more due to the fact that he was still trying to deal with the fact that he was suddenly _very good at Go_. Why the kid was silent, he didn’t know.

“Sorry.” The kid is absolutely not sorry. He’s wearing a school uniform, but the name tag is missing, dirt staining the front right side of the jacket, and—blood? Johnny blinks, startled, but as quickly as he’d noticed them, both marks are gone. “But you should. Shouldn’t, I mean.”

Johnny nods. This is the strangest dream by far. The game thing, yes, but the interrogation? By _far_ the strangest. “I mean, Jaehyun is not in love with me,” he offers, since—ouch—that’s probably the case, things old ladies on the beach had said notwithstanding. Jaehyun has been nothing but the best friend Johnny didn’t know he was missing; Johnny is the one with the… the feelings.

The kid sets a stone on the board with far too much glee, effectively putting a stop to whatever strategy Johnny thought he’d been working his way towards with his dream skills. “Oh, that’s a given,” he says, which Johnny thinks is really rather mean, since he’s a figment of Johnny's imagination. “That’s kind of the entire point.” He lifts his hand off the stone, and finally meets Johnny’s eyes. “Hyung.”

Johnny fights the urge to shake him. “What are you even _talking_ about?”

“It’s _your turn_ ,” the kid says again, dirt-smudged and bloody again, and Johnny swallows.

* * *

“Holy fuck,” says the kid, many, many moves later—Johnny stopped counting somewhere around thirty. “You won.”

Johnny stares down at the board and determines with his newfound dream knowledge that he has. “Huh.”

“Fuck,” the kid says, in the tone of someone who’s not quite used to cursing and tends to do it in excess to make up for that. “What the fuck?”

Johnny keeps staring down at the board, still a little freaked out by his sudden prowess at Go, and wondering if it’ll keep once he wakes up. He thinks he saw a game board set up in Jaehyun’s house somewhere—probably this room, actually, since that has to be where his brain is coming up with this stuff—and he’d love to best Jaehyun at something for once. He’d get all… adorably incensed. Blush a lot. Glower. Try to act like it wasn’t killing him, and then spend a terrible amount of free time he totally doesn’t have getting more than just good at whatever game he’d lost, just to prove he could.

“You’re still in love with him, aren’t you,” the kid says rather suddenly, dragging Johnny’s attention away from the game board and from Jaehyun. He sounds accusing, like the feelings growing in Johnny’s chest are a personal affront to him. “Typical.”

Johnny feels the urge to defend Jaehyun against his own—“who are you, again, exactly? Are you like my own personal Jiminy Cricket? Because I’d have thought you’d be older, or an actual cricket—”

The kid is staring at him like Johnny is a speck of dirt or something. “Oh,” he says with a significant amount of derision. “You’re _American_. Figures—”

“Excuse you,” Johnny tries to say, which is about the time he wakes up in the guest bed, alone. The door is swinging, the garden shears are back on the dresser, and Johnny stares mindlessly into nothing for a good two minutes, before clearing his throat. “Jaehyun-ah!” he calls, since there had to have been something that woke him. He’s rewarded by swearing, Jaehyun clearly having been on a walk past the door, maybe, and startled by Johnny’s voice. “You don’t have a problem with me being American, do you?”

There’s a pause.

Jaehyun’s unfairly pretty head comes into view, poking around the doorframe with narrowed eyes. He’s freshly showered and dressed for class because he’s wearing his glasses. “Is this a trick question?”

Johnny blinks. “What?”

Jaehyun’s gaze drops to Johnny’s neck again, a sentence that sounds remarkably like, “We have got to stop meeting like this, Youngho-hyung.” Johnny goes temporarily all shivery—his Korean name being something that came up only very recently, and Jaehyun doesn’t tend to use it, but when he does it feels… nice. Like they’ve gotten closer.

“Like what?”

Jaehyun narrows his eyes even further, nose scrunching to push his glasses up from where they’ve started to droop on his face from all the looking down. “Let me guess. You had another weird dream—”

“No—” Johnny starts to lie, but Jaehyun holds up a hand.

“Whatever, Johnny-hyung. I’ve got class. Let yourself out when you’re ready, you know the drill.” And then he’s gone with the wave of one hand, Johnny left lying in his guest bed, strange dreams of a kid who taught him Go and interrogated him about his feelings not quite forgotten, but less important than his feelings.

“Youngho.” Johnny taps himself in the forehead with an empty palm. “John. Johnny. Get it together.”

“What was that?” So Jaehyun is not entirely all the way gone after all.

“Nothing, Jaehyunnie!” Johnny shouts back. “Go to class! Don’t kill anyone trying to save them!”

He can practically hear the middle finger Jaehyun gives him in response, and laughs.


	3. Summer

It’s Saturday, June 26, the day after Jaehyun’s last day of finals, when the police officer comes to call. Johnny and Jaehyun have ordered a slip ’n slide off of Amazon, played three rounds of Rock Paper Scissors to decide who has to go down the thing first, and are taking turns threatening to hose each other down when the man arrives, clears his throat, gives a salute, and stands pleasantly in Jaehyun’s front driveway, sunglasses obscuring both eyes. “Jaehyun-ssi,” he says. “Johnny-ssi.”

Johnny drops the hose, good mood already evaporating, but Jaehyun just makes a startled noise as his feet get wet, then hurries to turn the water off at the source. “Officer-ssi,” Johnny greets the officer as he does, watching Jaehyun out the corner of his eye.

“Yuno,” the man introduces himself as. “Jeong Yuno.”

Johnny blinks. “Is this a joke?”

“Yun _ho_ ,” the man says again. “ _Jung_ Yun _ho_.”

“Different spelling,” Jaehyun tells Johnny quickly, finishing with the hose and hurrying back to Johnny’s side. “Different hanja—good morning, Yunho-hyung. How can I help you?” He straightens to his full height, looking this Jung Yunho in the eye. Jung Yunho is taller than Jaehyun, but probably not taller than Johnny. They’re about the same height, but Yunho feels taller. He has presence, an easy smile, and hasn’t taken his eyes off of Jaehyun once.

“Do you have a minute, Jaehyun-ah?”

Jaehyun stiffens even more, his shoulders starting to raise before he pointedly puts them down. His nostrils flare, but he meets Yunho’s eyes. Johnny watches him, trying to decide why he feels so… defensive. Maybe it’s because Jaehyun’s been so busy and so tired during finals. Maybe it’s because Yunho is interrupting them, and on a Saturday too. “Sure.” Jaehyun dusts both hands off on his swimming trunks and gives the officer his full attention. “What’s this about?”

“Kim Jungwoo,” says Yunho, and Jaehyun—Johnny doesn’t know what he’s talking about, but Jaehyun clearly does.

“I told you,” Jaehyun says, with quite a lot more tension in his tone now, despite the wide smile and easy-going attitude. “We were just classmates.” Johnny must make a face, because he glances at him and adds, “Jungwoo-ssi goes to Jeju University with me. He wasn’t in my department, but we ended up in the library together a couple of times. Yunho-ssi”—and that’s directed more clearly at their unwanted guest—“came by at the start of the year because of that.” Jaehyun’s demeanor goes less annoyed, and more earnest; Johnny fights the urge to step in front of him, feeling protective suddenly. “And I told you then as I’m telling you now—I don’t know why Jungwoo-ssi didn’t get on his plane for his semester abroad.”

For some reason Yunho is regarding Johnny instead of Jaehyun, but when Jaehyun finishes, his focus narrows. “Yes,” he says. “But since then, new information has come to light. Jungwoo has been missing since December, Jaehyun-ah.” He says that like Jaehyun ought to feel bad for telling the truth, or something. Because he clearly is telling the truth. Johnny doesn’t understand what Yunho’s problem is. He goes to speak. “A witness has come forward saying she saw the two of you… _together_ ,” Yunho says before Johnny can do so.

Johnny’s jaw snaps shut. He stares between Jaehyun and the cop, trying to figure out what’s going on. Jaehyun’s expression remains unreadable, but his ears, hidden under his hair, are blushing. (Johnny is very relieved that he’s been growing it out, since Jaehyun’s honest ears are quite frankly always a distraction.) “Together,” he says.

“ _Together_ ,” Yunho reiterates. “According to Cha Sungmi—”

Jaehyun’s mouth splits into a wide grin, when he realizes. “Oh, Sungmi-ssi,” he says. “I don’t mean to be rude, Hyungnim, but you know as well as I do that Sungmi-ssi is—less than reliable.”

The name is familiar, but Johnny can’t place it. Johnny is still trying to figure out what Yunho was implying by emphasizing ‘together.’ It had sounded like—but then, Jaehyun wasn’t all that surprised—and Johnny—Johnny ought not to think about his less than platonic feelings for Jaehyun in the context of them being questioned by the police.

“I do.” Yunho’s expression has gone much less pleased, but to his credit he’s holding his ground. “But you understand why I have to follow up regardless—”

“I can assure you, Jungwoo and I were classmates and nothing more,” Jaehyun tells him. “Sungmi-ajumeoni is always making things up. Half the time she thinks I’m her grandson.”

“That’s true,” Johnny says, finally remembering the woman in question—old, weathered, nearly running Jaehyun over on the beach and going on about Jaehyun’s “young men.” “When I met her, she thought Jaehyun was her grandson.” She had done no such thing, but for some reason Johnny wants to give Yunho nothing. His hands twitch, and he abruptly stills them at his side. Jaehyun is his friend, and Johnny is probably more than a little in love with him, and Yunho is here on hearsay and nothing else. “What even happened to this Jungwoo to make you suspect foul play, anyway?” he snaps. “Do you have a warrant? Are you here to arrest Jaehyunnie?” All this is stuff Johnny’s only heard on television, but he feels justified, and not inclined to stop talking.

Yunho is looking at Johnny with newfound interest now, Jaehyun seemingly forgotten. “He’s been missing since December,” he says. “His mother is very worried. There’s been a new lead.”

“One new lead, from a bad witness,” Johnny says. “And Jaehyunnie’s already told you it’s not true. He and this Jungwoo-ssi were just classmates. Was Jungwoo-ssi even a medical student?”

“No.” Yunho’s eyes dart briefly to Jaehyun, and Johnny’s hands tighten into fists at his side for a quick second before he gets himself together.

“So, unless you’re going to arrest him on _hearsay_ —”

“How long have you known Jaehyun, Johnny-ssi?” Yunho interrupts, watching Johnny with those bottomless eyes. “You’re new here, yes?”

“Six months,” Johnny bites out. “Since January. Why?”

“No reason.” Yunho swaps his gaze back to Jaehyun, and this time Johnny gives in and steps pointedly halfway between them; not that it does anything, Yunho just keeps staring Jaehyun down, and Jaehyun just keeps smiling unassumingly right back.

“Youngho,” he mutters. “It’s fine.”

It’s not fine, but Johnny lets his anger start to subside.

“You have very good friends, Jaehyun-ah,” Yunho says. “I’m sorry for the inconvenience. You’re right, Sungmi-ssi is—”

“Yunho-hyung!” a voice calls, more than a little shrill. A second officer has emerged from a second police car on the street, but that one drives off with a hand stuck out the window raised in a middle finger. “Thanks, Cho Kyu Asshole, I owe you two beers!” This man is taller than Johnny and Yunho both, with pronounced ears, a large-ish mouth, and furious eyes. “Hyung!” he says again. “What are you doing! I told you not to—hello.” He bows when he sees Jaehyun and Johnny. “Shim Changmin. I’m sorry if my _partner_ ”—here he reaches Yunho’s side and practically glowers the man into something resembling humility—“has caused any inconvenience. Jaehyun-ssi.” He glances at Johnny. “I’m sorry, I don’t know you.”

“Johnny,” Johnny says. “Johnny Suh. Suh Youngho—”

Changmin bows in greeting, before turning his attention back on Yunho. “Listen, I want to find Jungwoo as much as you do but you know as well as I do that this lead is shoddy at best and _harassment_ at worst—come on. I had to trade Kyuhyun two nights out for this. I can’t _believe_ you left me at the station.”

For two seconds Johnny actually thinks Yunho is going to force the issue, but then he turns to face his partner with an expression that would have been more at home on a toddler, and not on a grown man. “Changdol—”

“Don’t you ‘Changdol’ me,” Changmin snaps, already turning back towards the car. “Sorry, again.” He bows at Jaehyun and Johnny, and Yunho follows suit.

“But Changdol—”

Johnny watches them get in the car with tension in both shoulders, and only relaxes once the car rounds a bend and is completely out of sight. He lets out a deep breath, tells himself it’s perfectly natural to want to fight authority figures for your best friend, and turns to face Jaehyun full on. The slip ’n slide is still slick with water, but Johnny doesn’t feel much like using it anymore. “Jaehyun—”

“Hyung.” Jaehyun’s looking at Johnny without any of his emotions showing on his face, expression locked down like at any moment Yunho might be back. Johnny thinks he ought to be concerned how easy it seems to be for Jaehyun to do that, but he’s much too on edge, much too trigger happy, much too… fuck… protective of his neighbor, his best friend, Jeong Jaehyun.

“Let’s not—we don’t have to talk about it—” Abruptly Johnny stops talking because Jaehyun is hugging him, arms wrapped around him and head tucked under Johnny’s chin, unabashed and with a suddenness that leaves Johnny speechless.

“Hyung,” he says again. “Hyung—thank you.” He says it in banmal, the words coming out sounding more than a little clogged. “Thank you.”

Johnny puts his hands on Jaehyun’s back and pats him in what he hopes is a totally platonic sort of way, holding his breath so he doesn’t learn firsthand what Jaehyun’s hair smells like, or do something stupid like kiss him on the temple. “No problem,” he says, deciding they should use the slip ’n slide regardless just to try to reset. “Uh, so, the hose—”

Jaehyun pulls out of the hug with both dimples showing, and practically skips back to the faucet. “Ready when you are.”

“Spray me down and I’ll end you, Jeong,” Johnny tells him emphatically. “See if I don’t. I’m bigger. I will get you to the ocean and I will dunk you.”

“It’s a long walk,” Jaehyun says. “I bite.”

Johnny totally doesn’t think about any other context for Jaehyun to be biting him, and instead focuses his attention on the slip ’n slide.

That night he has another dream, but it’s just him and Jaehyun studying. Johnny attributes it to the fact that he’s seriously considering heading back to school and thinks nothing more of it

* * *

“This was a terrible idea,” says Jaehyun, watching Johnny put his back into carrying potting soil across the yard. Johnny has no idea why he’s said such a thing, since the weather is beautiful, the company is beautiful, and Jaehyun has only been leaving garden shears on Johnny’s guest room dresser since pretty much the first time Johnny stayed over. At this point the room is basically his, but Johnny still does his best to call it the guest room. This is mostly to avoid having a panic attack about how the room is also functionally his; Johnny didn’t even have to bring a toothbrush this time, because he left his at Jaehyun’s one night and instead of laughingly going to get it back, he bought a new one to use at his house.

“What’s a bad idea?” he says, setting the bag down beside where Jaehyun is kneeling in gloves, near the red rose bush. This is the first time Johnny thinks he’s been so close to the roses, and they really do take his breath away. They’re the kind red that Johnny wants to compre to blood, but instead of that making them creepy, it only makes them even more lovely—the color rich and dark and the sort of vibrant that Johnny usually associates with photo editing software. It makes the budding photographer in Johnny _itch_ to take whatever cashier job he can find so he can get his hands on a DSL just to take pictures.

It helps that Jaehyun is especially gorgeous when juxtaposed with the flowers.

“This,” Jaehyun says, in answer to Johnny’s question. “You’ve never been more of a city boy.”

“Hey.” Johnny reaches into the bag of soil and smears a bit down the side of Jaehyun’s cheeks in retaliation, then takes the higher road and doesn’t put his dirty fingers in Jaehyun’s open, shocked mouth immediately after. “Aren’t you from Seoul?”

Jaehyun’s ears blush but all he does is reach for the soil. “Okay so, the poppies.” He leaves the roses without a backward glance, heading to the bunch of flowers directly next to the bench—white poppies. “They’re my newest,” Jaehyun explains. “I had to keep them in the house all winter and they’re a little shy, but I think I needed something soft.”

Johnny blinks. “Soft?”

Jaehyun’s lips quirk. “Everything is very bright, I’m sure you’ve noticed,” he says, gesturing around at all the blooms of color—the bright gold that Johnny thinks he’s remembering correctly as goldenrods, the blue of the baby blue eyes, the pink mountain laurel, and the pink and red roses. “I think the white looks nice,” Jaehyun says. “It’s funny how that happens.”

Johnny nods, but his gaze has landed back on the red roses. They’re in the far left corner of the garden, but they really are the most impressive—not for being particularly complex or anything (they are, after all, only roses), but because of the color. “You have such beautiful roses,” Johnny has to say, not sorry. “I’ve never seen anything like them before.”

“Thank you,” Jaehyun says, with a smile that shows only half of one dimple. “And you wouldn’t—they’re one of a kind.” He keeps smiling with both dimples this time, but for some reason Johnny thinks he looks sad. He puts that thought away as he comes to stand next to Jaehyun, though.

“Right,” says Johnny. “So, more soil?”

“More soil,” Jaehyun says. “And then pruning, I guess.” He shoots a look back towards the red roses, then appraises the rest of the garden. “You’re all looking more than a little wild. Neglected.”

Johnny feels a shit eating grin stretch across his face. “Jaehyun-ah,” he says. “Are you one of those people?”

Jaehyun cocks his head.

“You know.” Johnny uses English and sinks to his knees beside the poppies. “One of those people who talks to their plants. I bet they all even have _names_.”

Jaehyun scowls, but Johnny notices he doesn’t deny any of that. “Shut up. I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.” He sits down beside Johnny.

“Uh huh,” Johnny says, pointing. “What’s that one called—Hershel?”

Jaehyun looks where Johnny is gesturing. “No,” he snaps.

Johnny isn’t convinced. “Uh huh,” he says again. “And you’re the one who kept leaving the shears in my—the guest bedroom.” If he’s lucky, Jaehyun won’t notice that little stumble. “Don’t pretend it was my idea.”

Jaehyun blinks. “I haven’t been leaving the shears in your bedroom,” he says.

Johnny snorts. “Don’t lie, Jaehyunnie-yah,” he says, reaching for a spade and weighing it in one hand. “I’m out here, aren’t I? You don’t have to be shy.”

“I’m not—” Jaehyun lets out a deep sigh and gently nudges Johnny’s hand away. “Don’t do that,” he says. “You’ll make a mess—”

Johnny just waggles his brows but lets Jaehyun direct him anyway. There is one uncomfortable moment when Jaehyun nearly bites his head off for humming something. “Where did you hear that?” he snaps, and then seems to glower particularly hard at the baby blue eyes when Johnny can’t really say where—a dream, maybe, since he thinks he’s been having the same recurring one about a very angry, short man who wanted nothing to do with Johnny. Other than that, it’s really nice, spending time with Jaehyun in the garden.

Although it’s really nice spending time with Jaehyun _period_.

* * *

Johnny is doing his best to convince himself that Jaehyun is not taking him on romantic, near-moonlit walks around the island on purpose when he nearly runs into an electrical pole with Lee Donghyuck’s face plastered all over it. It’s just after dinner, the sun hasn’t really gone down yet, and Jaehyun is complaining rather dramatically about his last semester, taking particular joy in cursing out some professors he— _thankfully_ —never has to have again come September. Johnny remembers, since Jaehyun alternated between being busy with class, busy with assignments, and finding time to befriend Johnny all through spring semester; he was there, but Jaehyun talks with his hands when he gets angry, and even sarcastic, inappropriate use of banmal with regards to professors is hot on him. Johnny was enjoying it, and the walk, until the pole.

Until Lee Donghyuck, smiling brightly and giving Johnny very visceral, horrible déjà vu. He nearly chokes on his own spit, stopping in his tracks to just look at the photograph.

Holy shit.

 _Holy fuck_ , as the kid in his dream had said. Lee Donghyuck, evidently. The kid in Johnny’s dream was Lee Donghyuck, and isn’t that just bizarre. He swallows.

Jaehyun finally seems to notice that Johnny has come to a halt and stops as well. His conversation briefly cuts off, before his tone goes curious when he asks, “Johnny-hyung?”

Johnny can’t bring himself to look at him, too busy staring at the poster attached to the electrical pole. Johnny’s not that much of an airhead that he’d somehow forgotten all about the kid who went missing two years ago in April, but—he definitely knows that face. Definitely dreamed of that face. He knows what Lee Donghyuck looks like when he’s laughing, when he’s lost surprisingly at Go, when he says shit like “You shouldn’t be in love with Jaehyun-hyung.” Johnny’s subconscious apparently thinks Jaehyun knows Lee Donghyuck, but Jaehyun said he didn’t. Johnny dreamed of Lee Donghyuck because he saw Lee Donghyuck’s face on a poster back in March and people only dream of faces that they’ve seen. Lee Donghyuck told him not to fall in love with Jaehyun because Johnny’s subconscious was warning him off pretty, unavailable, and only _maybe_ bisexual boys… right?

The poster Johnny’s staring at this time has a different photo—only one, instead of two. Donghyuck is still smiling, his eyes curved into joyful, happy slits. Johnny _stares at him_.

“Johnny-hyung?” Jaehyun has grabbed Johnny by the hand, tugged him out of the way of a passing group of people on bikes, and is staring into his eyes with concern on top of confusion. “Are you okay?”

Johnny gives the poster one last look and thinks of the look on the boy—on _Donghyuck’s_ face when Johnny admitted he was in love with Jaehyun (all the more reason to believe that this was really just his subconscious and not anything supernatural; clearly Johnny’s mind was trying to protect him from falling in love with someone way too fast), and also managed to win their game of Go.

“Hyung?” Jaehyun gives Johnny’s hand another squeeze.

“I’m fine.” Johnny tears his gaze away from the poster and searches desperately for whatever it was he and Jaehyun had been talking about. “You were complaining about your classes ending at five p.m. and then starting at seven a.m.—cruel and unusual punishment, I believe you were saying.”

Jaehyun still looks concerned, but finally releases Johnny’s hand so they can keep walking. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “Yeah.”

“Sounds rough,” Johnny offers with an attempt at a smile that he thinks is passable. “I mean I worked in an office, so I get it. Those hours are rough.”

Jaehyun finally smiles back. “They are,” he says. “And I’m expected to do like two quizzes and a whole case report for the next morning—”

Johnny lets their hands touch on his next stride but doesn’t reach out to take Jaehyun’s hand in his own. “Uh huh,” he says, trying for normal, though he still feels off balance. So, he’d dreamed of Lee Donghyuck. That probably wasn’t all that weird—his poster _was_ plastered all over the island.

But Johnny still ends up silent for the rest of that evening and most of the next day. He joins Jaehyun for dinner, but Johnny is bad company, leaving Jaehyun to carry all attempts at conversation. It’s only when Jaehyun has gone silent and left Johnny to his own devices that Johnny notices, looking up to see Jaehyun flicking through whatever on his phone, content in the way only introverts can be with silence. But Jaehyun doesn’t seem like an introvert, and Johnny feels guilty about the silence. He looks at the plate in front of him, sees—

“Watermelon salad,” Johnny says, finally turning to fully face Jaehyun, shaking off the weird feeling from earlier and doing his best to smile. “Your signature dish.”

Jaehyun lowers his phone, an answering hesitance in his own grin. “You remembered,” he says.

“Of course,” Johnny says, reaching out with his chopsticks to snag a bit of the fruit in question. “Just chopping fruit and vegetables.” He ruins the teasing by plopping one giant bite into his mouth, but Jaehyun still scowls and flushes on the tips of his ears.

“Hey—”

“Mm,” Johnny says around the mouthful, then coughs rather abruptly when he encounters seeds. “Oh—” He gives a rather undignified hack like he’s a kid still learning manners, spitting the seeds into his palm. “Um—”

“Sorry.” Jaehyun’s ears have gone even redder. “I must have missed a few seeds—”

“It’s fine.” Johnny plops them in his mouth and swallows, immediately deciding that he must be an idiot, because the smarter thing would have been to play the mole game, not… swallow watermelon seeds. But Johnny was never one of those kids who was afraid of growing fruit in his stomach, so he doesn’t spit anything out of his next few bites.

Jaehyun just blinks at him, mouth fallen open, eyes stuck on Johnny’s lips the whole time. “You—”

“Don’t worry,” Johnny says. “It’s good. I promise not to make fun of your vegetable and fruit chopping skills ever again.” He darts his tongue out to catch more juice, then wipes at the corner of his mouth with one hand, leaving it there when Jaehyun stares.

“Thank you?” Jaehyun’s cheeks are pink too, and Johnny can’t help but wonder if it’s because of the juice—but no, it’s probably just because Jaehyun is surprisingly bad at taking compliments.

“You’re welcome,” Johnny says, and goes to dig back in. “But you made more than just fruit salad, right—”

“Yes, Hyung.” Jaehyun rolls his eyes. “I even made your precious meat—”

“Thank you,” Johnny says this time, putting a hand on Jaehyun’s and smiling at him.

Jaehyun seems to go pink again, then strangely almost seems _angry_ , before he stands, shaking Johnny’s hand off him. “I’ll get you more water,” Jaehyun says, picking up Johnny’s glass. “Hold on.”

Johnny sets his hand in his lap guiltily, staring down at his plate and the table. That’s probably why he catches it, the bit of paper near Jaehyun’s chair leg that Johnny doesn’t think was there before. He bends to pick it up, uncrumpling it and reading the words before he can stop himself. It’s Jaehyun’s handwriting _—_ shockingly pretty script for someone training to be a doctor. _Momma’s boy_ , it says in English. _Went to Glenbrook North High School— CHICAGO._ “Chicago” is written in all capitals, as well as underlined three times. Johnny blinks down at it, confused. “Hey,” he says, when he hears Jaehyun come back. “What’s—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence because Jaehyun has ripped the paper away, glass of water clacking onto the coaster next to Johnny’s elbow with a bang. “That’s—I’m writing a novel,” he says quickly. “They’re character notes. I must have dropped them. Thanks—”

“Are you writing a book about me?” Johnny can’t help but ask. “I went to Glenbrook North High School.”

Jaehyun’s eyes widen, but then he smiles at Johnny with full dimples. “You’re just really memorable, Johnny-hyung,” he says. “I have to write _everything down_.”

Johnny sticks his tongue out at him. “Is there a character in your book named Jeffrey?” he says, then feels a little shy. “What? You’re memorable too.” Johnny doesn’t really remember ever talking about his high school, but he certainly remembers giving Jaehyun a proper American name. ‘Jay’ was just lazy on the part of Jaehyun’s teachers. And Jaehyun had looked so pleased. He looks pleased now, biting at his bottom lip as the piece of paper disappears into one of his pockets, and Johnny gets distracted. “So you write too?”

“Badly,” Jaehyun says, sinking back into his seat. “I really should stick to medicine.”

Johnny wants to touch his hand again but doesn’t. “Jaehyun-ah,” he says. “Don’t say that. You can be anything you want to be.” It’s sappy but Johnny is sometimes sappy, and Jaehyun just looks… Johnny wants him to smile more, that’s all.

“Eat,” Jaehyun says again, gesturing to Johnny’s almost finished salad. “No meat until you do.”

Johnny picks up his chopsticks.

There are no dreams that night, only blessed, peaceful, deep sleep that Johnny is so, so grateful for the next well-rested morning. The appearance of the garden shears on his bedside table—“not putting them there, my ass, Jaehyun,” Johnny mutters. “And watching me sleep is _really fucking creepy_.”—can’t even ruin his good mood. The bits of paper underneath them don’t bother him either. Johnny picks them up out of curiosity, noting most of them appear to be drawings of a sad looking man with a killer jawline, as well as a few others—two teenagers, a man with a bowl cut, another with an impressive philtrum, and one of a man having lunch with a rabbit labeled “rabbit-hyung and me”—before stuffing them in his pocket and continuing on his way. It’s a little weird, since they must be Jaehyun’s drawings and Rabbit Man _looked nothing like Jaehyun_ , but Johnny can’t draw that well, either.

Jaehyun is in the shower, the sound of running water obvious to Johnny’s ears even as he makes his way down the stairs carrying his running shoes. “Hyung?” he still calls, voice muffled by the walls and steam.

“I’m going on a run!” Johnny calls back in explanation. “Be back soon!” It feels very domestic, given they don’t even live together, but Johnny doesn’t care. He’s happy—more so when Jaehyun doesn’t respond, just goes back to washing his hair without pause.

“You’re whipped John,” Johnny tells himself as he steps out the front door and shuts it, locking it with his key. “You even have a fucking _key_.” He takes his hands out of his pockets and gives them a shake, doing a few knee-to-elbow steps in place to warm up. “You’re just friends, John. And neighbors. The key isn’t a big deal.” He doesn’t even sound convincing to himself. “It’s fine. You’re—it’s a crush—”

He plugs his headphones into his phone and steps off Jaehyun’s driveway, walking down the street and heading for his usual route. His AirPods are dead after one too many nights blasting music to fall asleep in an attempt to stave off weird dreams, so he has to use the wired ones, and they are already a tangled snarl.

“Figures,” Johnny mutters to himself, and goes to open Apple Music.

Then he stops.

Officer Jung Yunho is leaning up against a car just down the road from Jaehyun and Johnny’s houses, a lit cigarette in one hand, and both eyes seemingly fixed on nothing. He’s in rather average looking plain clothes this morning, but he’s too tall and muscled to be an average anything. He still blends in; Johnny only notices him because normally Johnny meets no one on his runs.

Johnny pauses. If Yunho has noticed him, he’s doing a very good job of pretending he hasn’t, lifting the hand with the cigarette to his mouth and taking a long, drawn out drag. Johnny pulls a face, not too keen on smelling like smoke by proxy.

He should just go on his run—not stop, or speak, or anything. “Hey,” Johnny says. “Yunho-ssi. Hi.”

Yunho lowers the cigarette with a smile, still not turning to look at Johnny. It’s creepy. “Youngho,” he says.

Johnny twitches like he always does when complete strangers call him by his Korean name, but dips his head in respect anyway. “Hi,” he says again. “Did you need something?”

“No,” Yunho says, still looking at nothing.

“Okay,” Johnny says. He should go on his run, but now he just wants to stay and protect Jaehyun from probably nothing. “Look, if you’re looking for Jaehyun I’m pretty sure that’s harassment—”

“I’m just enjoying the fresh air, Youngho-yah,” Yunho says. “But it’s good that Jaehyunnie has such a good… friend… in you.”

Johnny _really wants to punch a police officer_. “Yeah,” he says. “He does.”

“Here’s my card.” Yunho’s gone from smoking and looking at the sky to holding a business card out to Johnny and smiling in two seconds flat, leaving Johnny more than a little disoriented. “In case you need it.”

Johnny takes the card, because what he wants to do would probably get him arrested. “Thanks,” he says slowly.

“Have a good run,” Yunho says, then goes back to staring off into nothing.

Johnny forgoes music and starts to jog, not looking back once. “Bizarre,” he mutters to himself in English.

* * *

For two blocks, Johnny thinks the strain in his chest is just because he’s been neglecting his morning runs lately. There’s no reason for it to be anything but that, but after two blocks, the pain has only gotten worse, turned into an ache on top of feeling winded.

Johnny stops to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his brow, and has only managed to take three deep inhales before he starts coughing, a dry, uncomfortable thing that has him bent over with both hands on his knees, waiting for it to stop. It goes on for a lot longer than usual, but it’s mid-July and Johnny probably just has allergies, or something. It’ll be fine once he’s done.

He’s starting to worry that he’s actually going to pass out because of _coughing_ , when a handkerchief comes into his line of sight.

“Oh here, Dear,” says a voice, and Johnny doesn’t think about who it is—just takes the bit of fabric and hacks into that, finally managing to expel whatever it was that was tickling his lungs, and taking a few more seconds to just gasp for air.

“Thanks,” he rasps when he’s done, glancing down at the fabric hoping to see anything but blood— _Tuberculous!_ his stupid brain starts shouting. _The Plague! Black Death! Woe is me! Woe is me_. Instead, there’s only an embarrassing amount of spit and a few bright yellow flecks the color of curry. That’s kind of weird, but Johnny mostly feels embarrassed for hacking all over this poor person’s handkerchief; even more so when he looks up and sees Sungmi-ajumeoni.

The woman smiles at him, the picture of ease.

“Oh no,” Johnny says, balling up the handkerchief because he can’t give it back to her like this. “Ajumeoni. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry, dear,” Sungmi-ajumeoni says, patting Johnny on the arm. “Are you alright? You were turning blue.”

Johnny reaches up to feel his cheeks with his free hand; they’re hot, and he still feels lightheaded. “I’m fine,” he says. “I think it’s allergies—the pollen.”

Sungmi-ajumeoni nods. “My grandson, Yuno, has allergies.”

Johnny stares at her, knowing that Yuno is Jaehyun and not her grandson, and that he doesn’t have allergies. “Right,” he says, going to stash the handkerchief in his pocket, and wincing when he can’t fit it because of the sketches already in there. He pulls them out so he can shove the cloth away before Sungmi-ajumeoni can notice. “I should wash that. I’m so sorry—”

“Oh, what are those? Are you an artist, Youngho-yah?” Sungmi-ajumeoni has grabbed for the drawings, tugging them free of Johnny’s hand and rifling through them. “You’re very good, but I would expect nothing less from my grandson.”

“I’m not—ah, yes,” Johnny decides to say, suddenly too tired to fight—nearly choking will do that to you, it seems. “But, uh, Haelmoni I should go—”

“These are Yuno’s young men,” Sungmi-ajumeoni says suddenly, her eyes only on the paper. “Oh—I remember this one. The artist from abroad. He had such a long, funny name.” She’s stopped on the man eating lunch with the rabbit, and Johnny blinks, confused.

“What—”

“And what was _his_ name.” Sungmi-ajumeoni moves on to the boy with the bowl cut, her brow furrowed. “Oh—that nice officer Yunho was just asking me about him and Yuno.”

The similar names are confusing for a second, but then Johnny’s stomach drops suddenly. A nice officer Yunho and Yuno—Jaehyun. “Jungwoo?” he says quietly, not daring to hope. Jaehyun and Jungwoo were classmates, though, and since these are Jaehyun’s drawings, it wouldn’t be that weird.

“Yes!” Sungmi-ajumeoni’s entire face has brightened up. “Jungwoo!” She hands the papers back to Johnny, still grinning. “Oh, he was so nice, so shy, and Yuno was so smitten—”

Johnny can only stare at her, the business card in his other pocket feeling like dead weight. “Um, Ajumeoni—”

“What?” Sungmi-ajumeoni seems to come back to herself, looking confused. “Oh, Youngho—are you out on your morning run?”

Johnny swallows, but pats her hand. “Yes, Ajumeoni,” he says. “Do you need help finding your way home?”

“Oh don’t be silly,” Sungmi-ajumeoni says.

Johnny watches her walk away for two beats, before pulling out the business card.

`Jung Yunho`, it says, in neat type. `Jeju Island Police.` Then there’s an address for the precinct, and the man’s direct line. Johnny tightens his grip on the drawings, thinking hard. He can just call Yunho to find out what Jungwoo looks like, since Googling him would probably look bad, and if he meets with Yunho, he can tell him to leave Jaehyun alone in person.

* * *

“I would like it on the record that I’m only talking to you because you seem like a nice enough guy, underneath all the mistrust of Jaehyunnie,” Johnny says, sitting down in the fried chicken place Yunho picked for them to meet with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

Yunho had stood when Johnny reached the table and bowed like a gentleman, then had the audacity to pull out one of the empty seats across from him. Johnny took the one directly next to it with no small amount of glee, gazed fixed on Yunho’s face. He watches Yunho process that, biting the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning when the man’s eyes flick to the still pulled out chair before settling forward on Johnny again.

After that pause, Yunho sinks down into his own seat and gestures towards the spread of food he’s bought them, for all intents and purposes unbothered. “And I’m only talking to you because _you_ seem like a reasonable enough guy, underneath all the overprotectiveness for a complete stranger—sorry—six-month-long acquaintance. Eat.”

Johnny still wants to punch the police officer, but doesn’t. “I don’t know what your problem is,” he mutters, picking up a towel from the center of the table and wiping down his hands anyway. “Jaehyunnie is a good person.”

“Jaehyunnie,” Yunho says, picking up a piece of chicken and taking a large, healthy bite. “You’re awfully familiar for only six months.”

“Seven,” Johnny says angrily, picking up his own piece of chicken and taking a much smaller bite. “And I’ve always made friends fast. Jaehyunnie has been nothing but welcoming.”

“Mmm,” Yunho says. “And yet you called me.”

Johnny rips off a piece of chicken and chews, choosing his words carefully. Why had he called Yunho, again? Because of the drawings? Because of what Sungmi-ajumeoni said? Sungmi-ajumeoni wasn’t a reliable witness, Johnny knew that. She thought Johnny was her grandson. And Jaehyun too—over the course of one conversation. The drawings probably didn’t mean anything. There was no reason for Johnny to ask Yunho what Jungwoo—what Jaehyun’s classmate looked like.

“Youngho?” Yunho has finished with one piece of chicken and set aside the bone in the metal bowl between them, another leg held between both hands. “You called me?”

“Only to tell you to leave Jaehyunnie alone,” Johnny says. “And it’s _Johnny_ , Hyung.”

Yunho doesn’t seem bothered. “Johnny,” he corrects easily. “You don’t need to defend him. As Changmin said, the evidence against him really is circumstantial.”

Johnny glares, but doesn’t eat more. His throat is starting to hurt, an itch in the back of his mouth that makes him want to gag for some reason. He should get water. He looks for a server. “It’s non-existent,” he tells Yunho. “Sungmi-ajumeoni is _unreliable_.” He won’t call her crazy—the woman has been too kind to him for that—but he can tell Yunho hears it anyway. He feels like he’s going to throw up, gives up on looking for water, and stands. “Sorry. Bathroom—”

Yunho points with a grease covered hand, unfazed. “I’ll be here.”

“Thanks,” Johnny says, and makes a dash. The bathroom is for one person—a sink, paper towels, and a toilet, and Johnny locks the door behind him and skids to a halt in front of the mirror, chest heaving. He’s going to _throw up_ , even though he hasn’t eaten enough to warrant that; he barely had two bites of chicken. His stomach doesn’t feel knotted either, but the hacking is pretty distinctive. Johnny doesn’t even manage to get to the toilet before whatever was lodged in his throat comes up. It feels similar to the day before, but instead of specks of yellow, what waits for Johnny in the sink is—golden confetti?

Johnny stares down at it, body seemingly done retching, and furrows his brow. He opens his mouth wide and stares at the back of his throat in the mirror, spits a few times into the sink to no avail, and finally picks up what he’s just hacked out. It’s gross—wet, squishy, probably unhygienic—but it’s not like it was in another person. It was inside Johnny, and Johnny. Johnny blinks. He brings the lump to his nose and inhales. It’s… a flower, or part of a flower—a petal, more like. Johnny just coughed up a petal.

As soon as he comes to that conclusion it starts happening again, but this time Johnny has the sense to grab paper towels, holding them over his mouth and breathing through his nose as he waits for it to end. He has two more flower petals when he’s done, and they’re significantly less wet than the first. When he rubs them between two fingers, they break into something that resembles what he coughed up yesterday.

Johnny can only stare. “What?”

Someone bangs on the bathroom door. “Are you done in there? Other people need the bathroom, asshole—”

Johnny startles, then bundles the _not petals_ into the paper towel and chucks them in the trash. He turns on the water, splashes some on his face, and then, because his mouth feels somewhat like a desert, bends to stick his mouth under the stream.

The man waiting for the bathroom glares at Johnny on his way out of the door, but Johnny just smiles, bows his head, and says, “Sorry, Ahjusshi,” in his best, ‘my father owns a company’ voice.

There are quite a few more bones in the bowl next to Yunho when Johnny gets back, but Johnny doesn’t have much of an appetite anymore. He sits down, watches Yunho very calmly eat, and feels unsettled. He came here looking for answers and also to warn the man off of Jaehyun but now—Johnny is coughing up flowers? It must have just been something he ate. Johnny reaches for the water that’s appeared on the table—Yunho must have asked for it—and takes a few gulping sips to wash the stray food bits back down. No way it was a petal. That makes no sense.

“You know his best friend died?” Yunho says suddenly, once Johnny has put down his glass. He’s got his hands full of chicken bone and isn’t looking at Johnny. “Of Hanahaki disease.”

Johnny is honestly confused. “Hanahaki disease?”

Yunho still doesn’t look up. “You know, the flower thing,” he says. “Hanahaki. You die choking on flowers because of unrequited love? His best friend had it and died.” He finally seems finished with his chicken and reaches for a napkin, putting the bone in the bowl with the rest.

Johnny watches him, telling himself he’s being paranoid—he’s being stupid—he didn’t cough up a flower in the bathroom and even if he did, there’s no way Yunho would know and make up a ridiculous story just to scare him.

“The official cause of death was ‘asphyxiation due to alcohol use’—he choked on his own vomit—but it was Hanahaki disease. I asked around, found the EMT who was first on the scene.” Yunho finishes with one napkin and grabs for another, wiping at the grease and leftover chicken clinging to his fingers. “ _Jaehyun_ ”—Yunho says Jaehyun’s name with no shortage of gravity, eyeing Johnny over the table the whole time—“was nearly inconsolable when they got there. Kept rambling on about how his friend was choking on flowers—roses, I think the woman said. Kept telling him he loved him, too. Apologizing. The full works. It was very confusing.” Yunho finishes with the second napkin and goes for a third, even though his hands are clean. “His other friend denied it, of course. Said they’d been drinking, and maybe they’d had more than just a few—no mention of unrequited love, of course, but who would, in Seoul.”

Johnny narrows his eyes, then breaks off into another brief coughing jag before he can comment. Yunho very kindly goes to hand him a napkin, but Johnny waves him off, hand hovering near his mouth instead. He keeps eye contact with Yunho the whole time.

“The cause of death was ruled a straightforward alcohol accident,” Yunho says finally, seemingly unbothered by Johnny’s glare. “And the family didn’t want an autopsy, so when Jaehyun recanted all of his… more colorful exclamations, the cops wrote it off as his own little alcohol accident, if you get my drift.” Yunho fixes his gaze on Johnny again, eyes flicking briefly to the corner of Johnny’s mouth.

Johnny finishes lowering his hand and finds his voice. “Why are you telling me this?” he says, even though his heart is pounding, and his ears are ringing. It wasn’t a flower. This is a coincidence—a made up story.

“No reason.” Yunho wipes both hands on one final napkin. “Thanks for the lunch. You’ve got a little something, by the way.” He slaps enough won down onto the table to more than cover his half of the meal, swipes his own thumb across his mouth to give it a clean, and is gone before Johnny can move. Johnny must have food on his mouth or something; how embarrassing.

But there is no food under Johnny’s fingers when he checks, only half of a yellow petal. Johnny swallows, picks up the money and the bill, and goes to pay. He loses Yunho’s business card in one of the trash cans on his way back to the bus.

* * *

There’s nothing online.

Johnny searches `Hanahaki`, `Hanahaki disease`, `flower disease`, and even `unrequited love makes flowers grow in your lungs` but gets nothing, just prompts asking if he was looking for `flowers` or if he would be interested in visiting any of flower shops on Jeju Island. There’s one link to a forum with a domain name that would make Johnny nervous if he wasn’t on his phone, but he’s not going to click on _that_. You can write anything on the internet, and given that this is—that Yunho-hyung said it was a disease (which Johnny maybe—definitely— _maybe_ has)—he thinks he should find something with a little more repute. He thinks maybe he ought to look offline—get his hands on a real-life _book_ —and makes a note of the nearest library on the island, copying the address into a note on his phone. He doubts he’ll find anything. Yunho must have been messing with him, making fun because Johnny happened to have a petal on the side of his mouth.

But Johnny had a petal on the side of his mouth because Johnny has been coughing up flowers—marigolds, according to the internet. It’s been days of this, Johnny bowed over various sinks hacking up the things and Johnny is at his wits end. Since meeting with Yunho it has only gotten worse, no longer just two or three petals, and sometimes lasting so long that Johnny feels lightheaded. Whatever he has is definitely progressing, and Yunho had been very specific. _That thing where you die choking on flowers because of unrequited love_ , he’d said. _That thing where you_ die. Johnny doesn’t know if he wants it to be that—not because he doesn’t want to die, but because if it is, if Hanahaki disease is real and Johnny fucking has it, that means Jaehyun—

So, Johnny clicks on the forum link, heart racing.

It seems utterly useless upon first look. The section Johnny’s search yielded isn’t even on the page it opens to, so he has to click forward several pages to find it. There are tons of popups on each new page and Johnny wonders if this is just some elaborate scam on Yunho’s part to hack Johnny’s phone to get evidence of Jaehyun’s abduction of Kim Jungwoo, or whatever. But eventually he gets there, on page 127.

Everything is from a username in Japanese that Johnny puts into Naver dictionary without much hope, sighing when the thing just spits out the Japanese surname `Nakamoto` and nothing else. This Nakamoto person—`Nakamoto Yuta`, Google translate tells Johnny when he gives in and stops pretending to be more Korean than he is—has plenty to say about Hanahaki disease, but most of it is in response to deleted comments, leaving Johnny confused on top of worried about getting malware and/or hacked by the Jeju Island police force.

The only useful thing is Nakamoto Yuta’s first comment before the deleted replies, where he claimed to be something of an expert on the disease, in response to someone else’s seemingly unrelated bit of poetry about love making flowers grow in their lungs—typical internet troll rage-typing, Johnny has to concede.

Typical internet troll rage-typing that sounds pretty similar to what’s been happening to Johnny, however. There aren’t only deleted replies, of course. The original poet seems pretty amused by everything, sending a string of kieuks and some rose emojis that Nakamoto Yuta ignores, but then someone else says something particularly colorful about how Nakamoto Yuta needs to `grow the fuck up, man. flowers don’t spontaneously start growing in someone’s lungs. that makes no fucking sense,` and the man goes off on a tirade about how traditionally the disease is naturally occurring, but his research suggests it might be semi-contagious or at least possibly induced, and also, he is twenty-four fucking years old, you fucking asshole. But Johnny is a little too busy reading the bit about how Hanahaki disease is as fatal as Yunho had made it out to be; eventually the fact that the person has flowers growing in their respiratory system becomes something of a problem, and the person dies. Painfully. Choking on blood and petals, unable to breathe.

Johnny slaps a hand to his chest and holds, telling himself that it’s fiction—that it’s internet troll rage-typing, and the fact that Nakamoto Yuta appeared to be setting up a meeting with the person in the deleted comments means _nothing_. Delusional people make plans to meet up after weird internet discourse all the time; that doesn’t make it real.

Only Johnny is definitely coughing up flowers—that kind of makes it real.

“Library,” he tells himself, still holding his chest. “Library—real life… books.” There probably won’t be anything in the library, and Johnny won’t keep hacking up flowers, and everything will be just fine.

That night he has another dream of the man who speaks Kansaiben, only he isn’t speaking Kansaiben anymore. There’s no delay like there was the first time; the man leads with, “Johnny-hyung. _Listen_ ,” in perfectly fluent Korean, and Johnny throws his hands in the air.

He tries to say, “No! Not happening! I’m _dreaming_!” but he fails, because even in his dreams, he’s coughing up flowers.

So the man says, “Johnny-hyung. Youngho-hyung.”

“You’re not—real—my imagination—someone I probably saw—don’t read horror movie bullshit before—bed—” There’s blood mixed in with the slop of yellow-gold petals, and that’s even more proof that this is just a nightmare. Not once has Johnny coughed up blood—an increase in the number of petals from the first time it happened to now, yes, but blood? No.

The man looks down at the mess in Johnny’s hands and then grabs hold of them, ignoring the petals. “Oh no,” he says. “You’ve already—oh no—”

 _Wake up_ , Johnny thinks. _Wake up. Wake up._ What was it he was supposed to do when lucid dreaming? Call for help? Blink? Johnny does both those things, shouts for anyone—for Jaehyun—in his head until his throat hurts, _not because of the flowers_ , then starts blinking so quickly he feels dizzy.

The man seems confused. “What are you doing?”

“This is a dream,” Johnny says, suddenly able to speak, and a glance down at his hands reveals the flowers are gone, so that must be true. “I’m having a nightmare because I read all that bullshit about Hanahaki disease. You’re not real.”

The man’s hold on Johnny’s fingers tightens rather suddenly. “You know about Hanahaki disease?” he says. “Hyung. Johnny-hyung—wait—you have to—”

But Johnny doesn’t hear what the latest figment of his imagination wants him to hear, because Johnny wakes up, safe on the couch in Jaehyun’s living room, where he fell asleep next to his phone. The sun is just peeking over the horizon and turning the sky pink. Johnny lies on the couch for a very long time. Then he gets up, eats breakfast with Jaehyun as usual, and heads to the library.

It’s not a problem that the book he’s looking for— _Obscure Japanese Myths and Legends_ by Kang Chaeyoung—isn’t on the shelf.

Nor is it a problem that the librarian he asks about it takes his ID and says, “Oh, Suh Youngho. What a nice Korean name. The last person who asked for this book had such a long, foreign name.”

Johnny doesn’t think about Sungmi-ajumeoni rambling on about “Yuno’s young men—one from abroad, with a long, funny name.”

On the way home, he coughs up two more bouts of petals.

* * *

“Listen,” Johnny says, locked in one of Jaehyun’s many bathrooms with the phone pressed to his ear, the sink on and running quietly enough not to be weird, but hopefully still loud enough to drown out what he’s saying. “I don’t know his number off the top of my head—I threw out his card—but I need to speak to Yunho-ssi—”

“Okay,” says the man who picked up when Johnny called the Jeju Island police office. “And as I’ve said, he’s not here at the moment so I’ll have to take a message.”

Johnny fights the urge to swear at the nice officer, angrily shredding the latest series of petals into tiny, easy-to-wash-down-the-drain bits with one hand. “I can’t leave a message. It’s between me and Yunho-ssi—”

“Yes, I heard you the first time.” The man absolutely waves a hand once he finishes speaking.

Johnny really wishes he could remember his name—Cho something, he thinks. Cho Gyumin, maybe? “Officer-nim—”

“Oh, don’t call me that, look, what did you say your name was? Suh Youngho? You live in that big house on the east side of the island—”

“Look, if you could just tell Yunho-ssi I called—”

“Hey—”

“Johnny-hyung, are you okay?” Jaehyun’s voice from outside the bathroom is accompanied by a rap on the door that nearly makes Johnny drop his phone. “You’re not drowning in the sink, are you?”

Johnny glances down at the petals, some of which are still too big to go down the drain, and stuffs them, still wet and soggy, into his back pocket. “No,” he tells Jaehyun quickly. “I’m not drowning—what the fuck—”

“You’ve been in there for like ten minutes—”

“Look, hello?” the man says in Johnny’s ear. “Are you still there?”

“Please tell Yunho-ssi that I called and to call me back,” Johnny hisses, rattling off his cellphone number with memorized ease. “Thank you very much, goodbye.” He hangs up on the man’s sputtering and shoves his phone into the back pocket without the flowers, not interested in finding out just how waterproof iPhones really are. “Sorry, Jaehyunnie, I’m fine!” He shoves both hands under the running water to get them good and wet, before turning it off and grabbing the towel. “What’s up?” Johnny’s definitely panicking, because he’s spoken English.

There’s a pause, and Johnny hears Jaehyun muttering his own “what’s up,” in perfect English under his breath. Then he calls, “I finally got the record player working. The old one—worthy of _The Parlor_ —”

“I will drown you in the sea,” Johnny tells him, finishing with the towel and pulling open the door to reveal Jaehyun’s smirking, dimpled face.

“We can listen to that LP you got me,” Jaehyun says. “In The Parlor.”

“You pretend you never binged _Downtown Abbey_ but your Netflix history says otherwise,” Johnny hisses, and strides past him towards the room in question. “I’ve been on your computer. I’ve used your TV.”

“Next you’re going to tell me you’ve been reading my text messages,” Jaehyun says, following. “How jealous boyfriend of you—you know that shit’s unhealthy and abusive, right?”

Johnny fights the urge to hug him, Jaehyun’s use of “boyfriend” not going unheard.

“Hey, Hyung.” Jaehyun stills Johnny with a hand on the small of Johnny’s back, but somehow Johnny doesn’t turn around and clutch his pearls like a—well, like his alleged grandmother, he supposes. “You’ve got—did you drown in the toilet, instead?”

Johnny finally does turn, reaching back to the wetness that is his left back pocket, and glares. “Shut up.”

“Was it a stain?” Jaehyun says gravely. “Johnny-hyung. I promise I’ll cook for you whenever you ask. You don’t need to eat like a Neanderthal.”

“Drowning. In the sea,” Johnny says, through gritted teeth because he’s annoyed, not because his throat itches with the start of a marigold blooming on the back of his tongue. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , if he’s not in horrible, unrequited, death-inducing love.

* * *

Johnny opens his eyes and he is in the garden with Jaehyun and it has to be a dream. The last thing Johnny remembers is going to sleep in the guest room—but no, the last thing Johnny remembers is playing Go with Jaehyun, kissing Jeahyun, climbing into Jaehyun’s lap and being called a baby, too young and indecisive, _naive_. (Johnny’s never kissed Jaehyun, Johnny isn’t a baby, or too young and indecisive. _Naive_.)

Johnny’s throat hurts. His chest aches. Every inhale-exhale feels like fighting a war and he’s… crying? There’s water all down his cheeks and snot dripping from his nose but it’s raining, Johnny notices, so it can’t all be tears. There are large, painful droplets getting in Johnny’s eyes and spoiling the hard packed soil of Jaehyun’s garden, soaking both their clothes, and matting Johnny’s hair in his eyes. He supposes he’s lucky he didn’t take Dongmin up on that dare after he graduated top of his class, because it would really suck to be leaking dye down his face on top of tears. Siblings. (Johnny doesn’t have siblings?)

He coughs.

He coughs.

He _coughs_.

He can’t breathe.

He can’t _breathe_.

“Haechan-ah,” Jaehyun says, in a voice that Johnny doesn’t recognize—using a _name_ that Johnny doesn’t recognize—but he can’t say anything, can’t find air to say anything. Johnny can only hack, and cough, and gasp around more petals, more would-be flowers—marigolds—or sunflowers. “Does it hurt? It’ll be better soon.” He sounds soothing, calming, and then his voice sharpens. “Why are you crying?”

Jaehyun’s not looking at Johnny, though Johnny knows no one else is there. No one else is ever there when he sneaks away to steal kisses from Jaehyun. Nobody ever misses him—the eldest child, the wild child, with perfect grades and too big dreams, lucky to have a baby sister and two baby brothers to carry on the family name—Johnny blinks back salt water and rain water and _doesn’t breathe_ , trying and failing to remember why that’s wrong, why that’s strange.

(He doesn’t have two brothers. He doesn’t have a sister.)

He doesn’t—

He’s coughing up sunflowers—

“Why are you crying?” Jaehyun says again, and he kneels in the dirt, bringing him level with Johnny, who is also on his knees. He looks down his nose at Johnny. He frowns.

That’s—

Johnny’s taller than Jaehyun.

Jaehyun shouldn’t need to look down.

“You—”

“Not you,” Jaehyun snaps. His tone is suddenly icier, his eyes twin black holes.

Johnny tries to flinch back but can’t; Johnny tries to stay on his knees but can’t, falls face forward towards the dirt, still coughing, still gagging—sunflowers—marigolds— _sunflowers_ —

“Why are you crying?” Jaehyun says again. “Why are you _crying_? Don’t cry—”

He’s talking to the roses, Johnny realizes. He’s talking to the roses. The roses must be someone—someone like Johnny; young, and stupid, and choking to death on love.

There are sunflowers.

All Johnny can see are sunflowers and blood.

“There, there,” Jaehyun says suddenly. Johnny had forgotten he was there. “There, there, Donghyuck-ah, that’s it.”

That’s not the same name from before, Johnny thinks fuzzily, but it’s so very hard to think without air. The name seems important. Jaehyun… Jaehyun shouldn’t know that name. (Johnny thinks he has heard it before, somewhere.)

Jaehyun’s hands are on Johnny’s back and his palms are huge and warm—almost scalding. He strokes down Johnny’s spine, pets there like he would anyone coughing—choking?—Johnny is—choking—“Get all of them up—I’d hate to have to crack open your pretty ribs.”

Johnny. Johnny can’t think—

“—might still have to—so much force—but the roots—”

Johnny doesn’t like looking at Jaehyun, anymore. Johnny doesn’t want to.

Johnny can’t breathe—

Then there are hands on Johnny’s shoulders, like ice. He’s not in the garden anymore, but he doesn’t know where he is—it’s just dark and cold and frightening. He can’t hear Jaehyun anymore, can’t hear anything anymore, but he should, he realizes, because there is… someone.

There is a face in Johnny’s face, a man with dark hair, large eyes, and a killer jawline—he’s familiar, Johnny thinks. He’s seen him somewhere. He has a scar under one eye like a rose. He holds Johnny by both shoulders and opens his mouth too wide and _screams_ , but Johnny can’t hear him either. He thinks he says ‘leave’ and ‘Jaehyun-ah,’ but the rest of it is garbled, coming out as if through water, or smoke.

 _What are you saying?_ Johnny tries to say. _What do you need? Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Why am I here?_

“Leave!” the man howls in a silent, voiceless wail, repeating the one word over and over until Johnny finally figures it out; he’s never really needed to lip read before, but that’s—that’s leave, in command form, Johnny’s rudimentary Korean lessons from college playing on repeat alongside his mother insisting that he use her mother tongue before she’d let him out of the house to play with friends in Chicago. “Leave! Leave! Leave! _He’s mine_ —”

Johnny opens his eyes and is in the guest—is in _his_ bedroom in Jaehyun’s absurdly large house. The sheets are all the way at the end of the bed, tangled with his bare feet. The blankets are on the floor. It’s freezing, even though it’s the height of summer, and Johnny left the window open for a breeze. He can still feel the man’s fingers on his arms, still see the man’s horrifying, angry, angry eyes, the word ‘leave’ echoing in his ears like the chime of bells.

He gets up. He goes to the bathroom. He pees, washes his face, and brushes his teeth. He coughs up a handful of golden petals and counts to fifteen afterwards just to be safe. He doesn’t feel bad about washing them—or the blood—down the drain.

* * *

“Jaehyun-ah?”

“Mm?”

“Have you ever heard of Hanahaki disease?”

They’re in the parlor again, listening to more of Jaehyun’s favorite records, and Johnny has spent the last three songs pretending not to notice how Jaehyun keeps worrying his bottom lip between his teeth. It’s distracting. It’s turning Jaehyun’s mouth very, very red, and making Johnny think of other things. Bad things. Things not meant for friendly company—for friendship, however close it feels like he and Jaehyun have become.

Jaehyun doesn’t stop looking at his iPhone, but Johnny still gets the sense that he has the man’s full attention. “Where did you hear about that?” Jaehyun says.

Johnny swallows. So maybe it is true. Maybe Jaehyun’s best friend did die of Hanahaki disease. Which is real, and not just something mentioned in passing in an old book by Kang Chaeyoung. “I—no reason—someone just mentioned it, is all.”

“Was it Yunho-hyung?”

Jaehyun’s voice is calm, but Johnny can’t help but reel back physically in response. “No.” The lie comes out less than convincing, and Johnny shuts his eyes in brief despair. “Yes, look. He just wanted to get lunch. I thought it would be rude if I didn’t go.” _I wanted to protect you. I still want to._

Jaehyun keeps staring down at his phone. “Then you already know the answer,” he says finally. “I wish he’d mind his own business—Yunho-hyung.”

Johnny swallows, and is relieved that nothing squishes, or aches, or gives him a reason to excuse himself to the bathroom to hack up flowers.

“You can laugh,” Jaehyun says. “Believe me, I’ve heard it all and worse—there’s a reason the official cause of death was ‘asphyxiation caused by alcohol use.’” Jaehyun uses the same words Yunho had, but on Jaehyun, they sound angry and mean. Johnny wants to hug him.

“No—”

“It’s _fine_ , Johnny-hyung,” Jaehyun says, putting down his phone. “I can take it.”

Now Johnny just wants to punch random Seoul EMTs. “Jaehyun—”

“T—he was coughing up roses, but I—I mean who was going to believe me, if I said that,” Jaehyun says. “My own best friend—” He gets a dark look in his eyes and Johnny wants to hug him even more. “It was just easier to let them think it was too much soju.”

Johnny gets the feeling that that’s a lie, that whatever’s been said about Jaehyun’s best friend since then (and Jaehyun himself) was much worse than whatever might have happened had Jaehyun insisted on his story. “Okay,” Johnny says. “I mean—”

“It was Hanahaki,” Jaehyun says suddenly, getting to his feet and starting to pace the floor. “Nothing else makes sense. There were petals. And he kept saying—there was all this blood and roses—‘I love you,’ he was saying, that’s all he was saying. ‘I love you and it’s okay—’”

Johnny needs to hug him, gets to his feet to hug him, and is two steps towards when Jaehyun halts him in his steps, looking up at Johnny with a smile that is far too bright to be real.

“Anyway, Yunho-hyung is full of bullshit,” Jaehyun says. “The only thing officially ruling it Hanahaki disease would do is maybe give them grounds to charge _me_ , since I—well I mean—”

Johnny blinks, thinking that over, wondering—Yunho hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about who Jaehyun’s best friend had been in love with but it sure sounds like—Jaehyun—and now Johnny doubly can’t tell him about his own shit, because that would be awful on top of unnecessary. Johnny will just have to suck it up and get over it. Why all the people who supposedly died from this thing didn’t do that in the first place is just a lack of foresight on their part. Johnny’s fallen in love with plenty of people before, and then fallen out. And once he’s out of love with Jaehyun—pretty, kind, funny, lovely best-friend-he-never-knew-he-needed Jaehyun—Johnny will be okay again, and not coughing up flowers.

“Why did you ask?” Jaehyun says suddenly, drawing Johnny rapidly back out of his thoughts. The record has finished, but neither of them move to flip it over, or grab a new one. The parlor seems much less welcoming, now that it’s filled with silence. “Hyung?” Jaehyun’s eyes are so earnestly worried that Johnny hurts just looking at them, and not just in his chest where the flowers are. “Why did you ask—”

“There’s no reason, Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny lies, and he’s proud that he sounds perfectly composed, if not a little raspy. He can play some rasp off as disuse—there had been enough of a pause while Johnny had been thinking. “I was just curious because Yunho-ssi brought it up.”

Jaehyun narrows his eyes, clearly not buying it. “Johnny-hyung.”

Johnny gets up to touch him on the hand, smiling with all his might when his chest twinges with what surely cannot be the bloom of a new seedling and is probably just overexertion, or something, since Johnny hasn’t been running lately as the summer has started to wind down. “Jaehyunnie, it’s nothing,” Johnny says, still smiling. “It was just a weird thing Yunho-ssi said. I was curious.”

“Curious,” Jaehyun repeats, with very clear knowledge that Johnny is blatantly lying, but enough care for Johnny to know better than to push.

Johnny _loves him_ , but that’s not Jaehyun’s fault. Jaehyun is a good person. Johnny will get over this, and the flowers will go away, and things will continue as they have—Johnny and Jaehyun as neighbors with too big houses—best friends, and nothing more.


	4. Fall

Johnny makes it two more weeks before Jaehyun confronts him, barging into Johnny’s house and upending a trash can at his feet, marigold petals interspersed with other bathroom discards scattering across the floor. “‘There’s no reason,’” Jaehyun quotes, anger coming off him in waves. “‘It was just something Yunho-ssi said and I was curious.’”

Johnny just stares at the trash with his mouth open and blood roaring in both ears. “You went through my trash—” he says.

“It’s _my_ trash,” Jaehyun snaps. “You left that in _my bathroom_ —Johnny-hyung, _you’re coughing up flowers_ —”

“I’m not,” Johnny lies, turning to go grab a broom so he can sweep up the mess. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He gets the broom and starts to sweep, not meeting Jaehyun’s eyes the whole time.

“Johnny-hyung.” Jaehyun’s voice is whip thin and vicious. “You’re coughing up flowers.”

Johnny keeps his back turned to him, sweeping everything back into the rather conveniently placed trash can. “I don’t know what you’re talking about—” His sentence ends abruptly around a mouthful of petals, and for a few seconds the two of them just stand there in awkward silence, Johnny refusing to open his mouth and show Jaehyun any more evidence, and Jaehyun probably debating the merits of forcing Johnny’s mouth open.

“God!” Jaehyun swears, yanking the broom from Johnny’s fingers and sweeping testily at nothing. “Why didn’t you just tell me? I’m the last person who would have made fun of you—Hyung, I know all about Hanahaki disease—I’ve done research—I can help—”

 _The only thing you can do to help me is love me back_ , Johnny thinks angrily, watching Jaehyun finish with the trash can and set it upright with a snarl. _And heck if I’m telling you that. That’s selfish, and bullshit, and cruel_. It’s not Jaehyun’s fault that he doesn’t love Johnny back, and just because Johnny has contracted a rare and terminal disease doesn’t give him the right to guilt trip Jaehyun into faking feelings—it probably wouldn’t even work, and Jaehyun would feel even worse once Johnny died.

“Johnny-hyung,” Jaehyun says, still mostly a wail, but less angry now. “Johnny-hyung. Johnny-hyung. You were just going to let me watch you die.”

Johnny is suddenly so angry at him that he can’t see straight, stepping forward with his own snarl to take Jaehyun by both arms, hold him a breath away, and stare deep into his eyes, practically shaking from not shaking _him_.

“Johnny-hyung,” is all Jaehyun says, a broken, fragile thing, and the look in his eyes makes Johnny’s chest ache—not from flowers, just from care. Jaehyun’s eyes are pained, broken, furious, wet, and something else, something intangible, something that skips along the edges of Johnny’s consciousness and eludes him, because if he wasn’t fighting against his very lethal affection for the man he might almost call it pleasure, though that can’t be. Jaehyun’s eyes are shining, tears of frustration and selfless, kind _affection_ , pure and painful, though not the type Johnny longs for, that the flowers in his ribcage need. “I—”

 _Love you_ , Johnny imagines Jaehyun saying, and the flowers dissolving into ash like vampires, driven out of the dark and into the sun by Jaehyun’s favor, his infatuation, requited, undying, and real.

“I’m your friend,” Jaehyun says, and then chokes on a sob, when Johnny tries to smile and coughs up bloody flowers instead.

“I’m—”

“If you say fine I’m going to kill you before the flowers can,” Jaehyun spits, then looks like he hates himself for saying that, even though they’ve been joking about it since they met in January—only seven—nearly eight—months ago. “Oh, Johnny—”

“Jaehyunnie, it’s okay—”

“It’s not okay,” Jaehyun says, but he’s staying limp in Johnny’s hold regardless, the fight seemingly leached out of him in face of the saliva covered flowers and the blood. It’s quite unfortunate that Johnny had to hack them up onto the foyer beside them, but there’s a trash can right there, and a broom. It’s no worse than what Johnny’s been doing, the past few weeks. “It’s not okay.”

Johnny has to give him that, lets himself lean in for a hug that he doesn’t deserve, if only to pretend that it helps. _He loves me in the only way that matters_ , Johnny tells himself emphatically as Jaehyun’s hands come up to circle behind his back, the pinch of his fingers as he holds on like he has claws the only sign that he’s still upset. _He loves me like a friend. I want to be his friend. I would hate to lose him as a friend, just because of this._ “Jaehyunnie—”

“You’re moving in,” Jaehyun says into Johnny’s hair, his grip finally starting to soften. “You basically came over all the time before you started hiding your terminal illness from me”—Johnny winces, but Jaehyun just keeps talking, hands softening, but not so soft that he’s at all letting go—“so it’s pointless to fight me on this. The room is already yours. You just need to get your clothes. Turn off your air, maybe call the cable company—”

Johnny kind of wants to laugh. “Jaehyun-ah,” he says. “The last thing I want to think about right now is how much I’m paying for television I won’t be watching.” He stops talking to cough, but it’s not flowers this time, just a dry throat. “Besides.” He clears his throat and draws away from Jaehyun’s unfairly warm chest so that he can really smile at him, not a fake one filled with false promises. “Once you fix me, I think I’ll need it, yeah?”

The look that dawns on Jaehyun’s face makes Johnny’s stomach start to ache to match his lungs, and cruelly, he hates whoever thought to call them butterflies. But butterflies surely match with flowers. They probably even eat marigolds, and if Jaehyun fixes him… when Jaehyun fixes him, that’ll be exactly what’ll happen.

“When I fix you,” Jaehyun says.

Johnny raises an eyebrow. “Are you already going back on your word? What happened to ‘I’m a medical student?’ Haven’t you done research?”

Jaehyun bares his teeth at him, though his eyes are still shiny. “Fuck off, Johnny-hyung,” he says. “I’ll fix you. I’ll make it better. You’ll see.” He tugs Johnny in for another hug that makes Johnny’s heart race, and he closes his eyes and breathes him in, pretending that it’s enough—Jaehyun’s friendship, his resolve, his goodness. “I won’t let you—”

 _Die_ , Jaehyun doesn’t say. Johnny thinks it anyway, because it’s worth it, honestly. Johnny would die if it meant he could spend more time with Jaehyun, probably will die to spend more time with Jaehyun, because Johnny… if the only way to save Johnny is to get rid of the feelings along with the flowers, Johnny will take slowly choking to death on marigolds. And he’s dying anyway. He might as well do it in Jaehyun’s presence. Hiding hasn’t done anything to make the flowers or feelings go away, and if Johnny has to die because of how much he loves Jaehyun, he’d rather die being his friend than alone.

“I won’t let you,” Jaehyun says, emphatic and furious and shaking as he holds Johnny close. “I promise. You’ll be fine. I’ll fix you.”

“Okay,” Johnny tells him because he loves him. “Okay. I believe you.” He fancies he can feel the roots curling within his chest tighten.

* * *

“Is she tall?” says Jaehyun.

Johnny ignores him, too busy folding his clothes and setting them into the empty drawers in Jaehyun’s guest room.

“Not tall,” Jaehyun mutters to himself. “Is she short?”

Johnny keeps ignoring him, setting in bathing suits, then boxers.

“Not short… Not tall… that doesn’t make sense… Unless… Is it even a she?”

Johnny tries not to react to that one, but Jaehyun latches on regardless.

“Hah,” he says, and when Johnny risks a glance, he’s pointing. He’s stunning where he’s flopped on the bed, hair shoved off his forehead with that godforsaken headband and practically a puppy as he watches Johnny pack his life into his house, effectively moved in for the rest of the semester so that Jaehyun can better play nursemaid.

Neither of them are addressing the fact that Johnny probably doesn’t have very much time left—Johnny because doing so would involve admitting to feelings that would only serve to make Jaehyun feel terribly guilty, and Jaehyun because he’s still pretending he’ll somehow be able to fix Johnny with modern science. Johnny doubts that will ever be possible, but Jaehyun insists—thinks with enough time and thought he’ll be able to cut the flowers out of Johnny’s lungs along with the one-sided love, unaware that his selfless, stubborn insistence on doing so is only serving to make the flowers in Johnny’s lungs bloom _more_.

“It’s not a she,” Jaehyun concludes. Then his face briefly grows concerned. “It’s not Yunho-hyung, is it?”

Johnny gapes at him. Technically he supposes it is a Jeong Yuno of sorts, but not that Jung Yunho. “No?” he says finally. “What the fuck?”

“Oh, good,” Jaehyun says. “I mean, not good—there’s nothing wrong—Yunho-hyung’s, uh, nice looking, I guess.”

Johnny wants to die. Johnny would really just rather the marigolds get it over with and choke him out, rather than this.

“—but I always sort of thought he and his partner—Changmin or whatever—and he’s old—”

“He was born in 1986,” Johnny manages. “You fetus.”

Jaehyun smirks at him, dimples out in full bloom. “He just keeps calling you, is all,” he finishes. “So, I wondered.”

Johnny mulls that over. “Wait—how do you know he’s been calling me?” Yunho has been calling Johnny pretty much non-stop, but that has more to do with Johnny harassing his coworker into telling him he needed to speak to him than any sort of unrequited love on either of their parts. And there’s no reason Jaehyun should know either of those things.

“I—” Jaehyun’s ears have gone red. “Your phone rang a few times while you were sleeping so I just—”

Johnny finishes putting away his clothes and goes to sit on the bed next to Jaehyun, shifting around so they both fit. He thinks it’s good Jaehyun is also tall, so none of the furniture is too small, and all of the doorways and light switches are more optimally located. The bed is big enough they don’t have to touch if Jaehyun doesn’t want them to.

Jaehyun doesn’t seem to care, knocking their legs together in a move that can’t be on purpose, but still makes Johnny’s stupid heart try to pick up, even though it’s killing him.

“Don’t worry about it,” Johnny tells him.

“Anyway, it’s not Yunho-hyung,” Johnny says to change the subject, though his sentence cracks in the middle when he realizes that’s a bad admission, because now Jaehyun is going to continue his interrogation. “You don’t know them—it’s someone back home—from before I moved.”

Jaehyun narrows his eyes at him but seems content to let Johnny get away with it. “Uh huh.”

Johnny knocks their legs together on the bed. “Jaehyun, it doesn’t matter who it is, since you’re going to fix me anyway.”

Jaehyun still looks a little constipated, but then he visibly brightens. “Yes,” he says with feeling. “Yes—so—first—” He breaks off, good mood evaporating when Johnny pauses to cough up a few more petals into the conveniently placed trash can, which sports a brand new plastic liner and is rapidly on its way to being Johnny’s brand new friend given the number of places he has to take it whenever he moves around Jaehyun’s house.

“You were saying?” Johnny says hoarsely, once he’s done coughing. Only five petals that time—small fries, compared to recently. Johnny only feels very slightly like he’s been eating glass.

“We have to keep track of every time you—every time you do that,” Jaehyun says, crossing the room to pull out an actual real life notebook, flipping it open and drawing a dark line. He writes down the date, pencils in the time, and writes out _five petals_ in his startlingly pretty penmanship.

Johnny loves him and fights not to make him add another entry. “You don’t think that’s excessive?” he says finally.

Jaehyun narrows his eyes. “I’m sorry, which one of us is the med student and which one of us is the idiot who lied to his best friend about his terminal illness?”

Johnny’s chest feels warm despite himself. “Best friend?”

Jaehyun’s ears color. “Oh, well, I guess—friend, if you want, I’m sorry—”

“Jaehyunnie-yah,” Johnny says. “I’d love to be your best friend.”

Jaehyun brightens. “Ah, I—I’m glad, Hyung,” he says. “Now—”

Johnny sits back in bed, content to watch Jaehyun work. He thinks… maybe. Maybe. 

* * *

“How many?” Jaehyun says, appearing seemingly out of nowhere holding the composition book.

Johnny looks up from the trash can and gives him the middle finger, mad about the lack of privacy, and mad because not even the lack of privacy or Jaehyun’s near compulsive monitoring of his illness have changed anything about Johnny’s feelings for him. “Seven,” he rasps out, spitting a few times and then taking the glass of water Jaehyun hands him with an annoying amount of gratitude. The first few sips are literally just to wash the taste of petal out of his mouth—according to the internet, people can eat marigolds, but at this point Johnny would like to do _anything but_ that.

Jaehyun is frowning at the notebook, mouth downturned. “That’s more than earlier,” he says.

“Yipee,” Johnny manages. “I’m going to go lie down for a while, now. Watch some Netflix. Call my mom and reassure her that it’s just a really bad cold.”

Jaehyun is too busy scribbling in his notebook to harass Johnny for refusing to tell his family that he’s dying, which is good, because whenever he does that he looks particularly attractive, and the consideration he shows Johnny’s mother (whom Jaehyun loves because she sent them a care package once upon a time and it had food) really does nothing to help with the unrequited love.

* * *

“So that was—”

“I swear, I’m going to put a bell on you—only three—”

“And would you say your ribs hurt—”

“ _Your_ ribs are going to hurt—”

“Hyung this is important—”

“God, _why the fuck am I in love with you_ —”

“What was that?”

“I said my ribs don’t hurt any more than usual! God, Jaehyun, you’re worse than my mom!”

Jaehyun snaps his jaw shut, pen halting in its scratch across the notebook. His ears have gone very, very red. “I’m sorry if me trying to save you is annoying, Johnny-hyung,” he says finally, with the air of someone with a stick up his ass for sure.

Johnny groans, because it’s not like he loves him any less, the twinge behind his breastbone case in point. “Oh, fuck, don’t make that face—hold on—where’s the—thanks—”

He coughs up at least two more petals, and Jaehyun crosses out _three_ and pens in _five_ with only a mild sigh.

“Sorry,” Johnny feels compelled to say. “Sorry—”

“ _Fuck_ , Hyung, don’t apologize—look, let’s do something else. See a movie. Go to the beach. Go for a run? You haven’t been on a run in forever and I—I’ll even go.”

Johnny would love to see that, since Jaehyun finds running boring. He likes listening to music and likes seeing the world, but the monotony of jogging does nothing for him, which Johnny was content to milk as his one character flaw if it would help him survive. Only, clearly that’s a lost cause, since Jaehyun is nice enough to offer to run with him. He’s too busy coughing up even more petals to notice the strange glint in Jaehyun’s eyes, even as he hurriedly grabs for the abandoned water glass and amends his notes to read _nine_.

* * *

“Johnny-hyung?”

“Jaehyun, I’m not really in the mood—”

“No, I—do you mind if I just sit with you, for a little?” Jaehyun sounds so small, and when Johnny looks at him, he even looks small. Lost. Upset. In despair.

Johnny had wanted to be alone with his thoughts and his own despair, but he scoots over on the couch to give Jaehyun room anyway, swallowing the piece of petal that tries to come up when Jaehyun tucks into him, chin resting on Johnny’s collarbones, and hair getting in Johnny’s nose.

 _Fuck_ but Johnny loves him.

 _Fuck_ if it’s not killing him.

“Hyung—”

“Shh,” Johnny interrupts. “I’m sleeping.” He pauses, letting Jaehyun just breathe. “You can stay,” he says, and shuts his eyes so that he doesn’t cry.

“I’ll save you,” he thinks he hears Jaehyun whisper. “I’ll save you. I’ll—you—so pretty—next—Jungwoo—orange—second gold.”

Johnny sleeps and doesn’t dream.

* * *

It’s the first time in a while that Johnny wakes up not choking on marigolds, and for the first few moments he lets himself think that it’s real progress, until his throat tickles and his lungs heave and the next few minutes are spent gasping over the trash can, unable to stop choking no matter how much he needs to breathe. _Get out_ , Johnny thinks. _Get out. Get out. Get them out. There, there. I’d hate to have to crack open your pretty ribs_ —

“Johnny-hyung!” Jaehyun is by his side and holding him through the final, painful shudders, one hand coming around to hold the trash can steady, the other petting Johnny between the shoulder blades—warm—large—scalding.

Johnny shakes, finds his breath, and lets himself heave. What the fuck? Why is he thinking of that dream? “I’m—better,” he says, a compromise because last time he said he was fine Jaehyun did actually lose his mind a little, angrily making Johnny breakfast with an unnecessarily large knife, talking shit about nothing the whole time—the Teseum, apparently, was a complete tourist trap for closeted furries, and fuck if Johnny hadn’t been the worst for dragging Jaehyun there. Johnny said he didn’t know Jaehyun remembered their first date, let alone what a furry was. Jaehyun nearly chopped off his own thumb, but stopped looking quite so murderous in time to tell Johnny, hushed and not making eye contact, that telling someone they wanted to marry a teddy bear was _not_ first date material. Johnny hasn’t lied and said he’s fine since, and not just because Jaehyun looked so lovely when he laughed afterwards. Johnny hadn’t realized how much he missed Jaehyun’s.

“You’re not,” Jaehyun says, setting down the trash can and pulling out a handful of tissues. “You’re getting worse—”

“It’s okay, Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny says, taking the tissues from Jaehyun’s shaking hands and wiping at the spit on the corner of his mouth. It’s bloody again this morning too, and Johnny sighs. For two days in the middle there had been much less bleeding, much less coughing, and Jaehyun had stared down at the notebook where he’d been tracking the frequency of Johnny’s attack with the oddest look on his face.

“I think they’re actually decreasing,” he’d said, surprisingly shocked for someone who kept firmly insisting on his ability to cure Johnny of the incurable, and then spent a few days angrily working in his garden, rain or shine. It had mostly been rain and very little shine, the sky black to match Jaehyun’s seemingly furious mood, and when he’d finally seemed ready to come in for longer than to make Johnny meals and force him to recount any and all flower incidents, Johnny had reverted to coughing with greater frequency.

Without blood, though. There had been three days without blood.

Then two with it, and now—this.

Johnny had almost forgotten what it felt like to be powerless to stop coughing, tears gathering in his eyes hoping that this wouldn’t be it, that his body would finish expelling the feelings taking root in his alveoli.

“Hyung,” Jaehyun says, pleads. “Hyung—tell me—who is it—I promise I won’t judge—”

“It’s not important,” Johnny says, voice a rasp of pain and coughed up marigolds. “Jaehyunnie, I swear, I’m”—his words slice in two around another pair of mottled, bloodstained petals, and Jaehyun balls a tissue around them in wordless, rage-filled silence—“fine,” Johnny finishes, not feeling guilty at all. So much for not saying it. So much for Jaehyun’s laughter.

“I go back to school in September,” Jaehyun says. “I—what if you—” Johnny puts his hand on Jaehyun’s hand around the angry ball of tissue and petals to get him to stop talking.

“Jaehyunnie,” he says, telling himself it’s stupid to believe that even just this bit of concern might stave off what is very clearly becoming a mortal disease. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” Jaehyun says, and it’s cruel again, fighting words, meant to hurt. “You’re not fine and I’m not just going to sit here and watch you—”

“That’s why I didn’t want to tell you,” Johnny says. “It was better when you didn’t know, Jaehyunnie—”

“How. Dare you.” Jaehyun is surprisingly gentle when he eases more tissues to Johnny’s mouth to gather more bloody flowers. “How dare you try not to tell me. I’m going to save you. I’m a medical student, Johnny-hyung, I can’t—sit back and do _nothing_.”

“Jaehyun—” Johnny hates how the flowers are interrupting his speech so much now, especially since it’s always worse whenever Jaehyun is particularly selfless or kind. Johnny loves him so much there are roots in his lungs, running wild in his ribcage, and making everything hurt. Love hurts, love is blind, love is staring at him, with wild hurt in his eyes.

“I’ll fix it,” Jaehyun says, with a surprising amount of fierceness. “I’ll—you’re a good person, Johnny-hyung, Youngho-hyung.”

Johnny feels that sentence like a knife in his side.

“Whomever you love is a fucking _idiot_ ,” Jaehyun continues. “But we can. We can figure this out. I’ll get you better clothes—help you dress to impress—and we’ll—if you’d just tell me who it is—”

“No,” Johnny says, without any trouble. “Not a chance.”

Jaehyun stares at him for a long moment, and then snarls, hurling the bloody tissues against the far wall of Johnny’s bedroom with a wordless howl. “You are _impossible_ ,” he snaps. “I’m not watching you die.”

 _I won’t make you complicit_ , Johnny doesn’t say. _I won’t make you hate yourself for it. Not again. Not again_.

Jaehyun storms out of the room before he can say anything particularly irrevocable, but oddly enough, Johnny swears he’s smiling as he goes. But that can’t be. It must be rage quirking Jaehyun’s mouth. Fury putting bounce in his step. Why would Jaehyun be happy? Jaehyun’s not happy. Jaehyun is livid, and terrified, and Johnny loves him so hard that it hurts.

He gets up, somehow, what feels like hours after Jaehyun has left, mostly to brush his teeth, and cough flowers into the sink instead of the trash can. He doesn’t wash them down the drain anymore, just leaves them there for Jaehyun to find, too tired to do more. But it’s awful in front of the sink because of the mirror, letting Johnny see firsthand just how sickly he’s become. Pale, thin, dying of unrequited love. He hasn’t been running in weeks, because any sort of exercise is too much for his lungs now; it’s like Johnny’s a smoker without any of the tobacco. Even up and down the stairs to the kitchen because he refuses to eat in bed like an invalid is already a stretch. Johnny looks like he’s wasting away from an incurable disease, and he hates it.

So, he decides to leave his room—takes his phone because he’s not a complete idiot—but holds his head high and ventures out, dressed in Jaehyun’s old sweats and a tee. It fits him. Johnny is _dying_. He wants to see a different room—look out a different window, not do anything particularly strenuous. Someone still chastises him when he reaches the stairwell, however.

“Hey. Don’t do be stupid. If you fall and break your neck on the second floor Jaehyunnie will have so much trouble burying you in the garden. He’ll have to wait until dark, and rigor mortis—you’re going to bleed all over the carpet when he digs the flowers out, and that won’t be pretty.”

For a few seconds Johnny just stands there, halfway to another room with a better view, trying to figure out what the heck the voice is talking about. Rigor mortis? Cutting out flowers? Burying Johnny in the garden? The voice makes no sense—the voice is confusing—the voice is… not Jaehyun. The voice called Jaehyun “Jaehyunnie.” It spoke of Jaehyun like he wasn’t there. He isn’t here. The voice isn’t Jaehyun’s.

Johnny turns awkwardly to glare down the stairs, in no state to be fighting any sort of battles, but ready to do so anyway. “Who the hell are you?” he says, gaze fixed on the man.

The man is tall—almost as tall as Johnny and Jaehyun, and thin. He has dark hair, large eyes, and prominent ears. He kind of resembles a rabbit—cute, standing on hind legs, and twitching. Johnny frowns extra hard at him, hoping he comes across as threatening despite the illness.

The man blinks. “Wait,” he says. “Wait. You can _see me_?”

Johnny has déjà vu, but he knows for a fact he’s not dreaming. Unless he drifted off without even noticing. That could happen, but Johnny really would _hate_ for that to be the case. “What are you doing in Jaehyunnie’s house—whoa!” Johnny says, when in two seconds the man is up the stairs and directly in his face, not having moved at all—having fucking _teleported_ to get there, to sink _transparent_ , _incorporeal_ fingers through Johnny’s shoulders. Johnny laughs nervously, accepting that he must have fallen asleep without realizing it, and starts an inner mantra of ‘help me, help me, help me’ with bonus blinking.

“What are you—oh God, Yuta-hyung said you did that—stop it—you’re not dreaming,” barks the man, and this time his hands manage to stay on top of Johnny’s shoulders, not go through them. “Johnny-hyung,” he says. “Youngho-hyung. Snap out of it. You’ll wake Jaehyunnie.”

Johnny very abruptly stops laughing, all his attention focused. “Jaehyunnie’s asleep?”

“Clearly.” The man seems to be staring down where his hands are resting on Johnny’s skin, expression odd. “You think I’d be out walking around if he was awake? He might be a non-believer but he’s not a complete idiot, and I’d hate to see what would happen if he hit his breaking point and called for an exorcism.” The man shudders, a full body thing that Johnny finds himself emulating, mostly because of the hold he still has on Johnny’s biceps. “Anyway he’s—dreaming.” Now the man looks particularly pinched, casting a look down the stairs like Jaehyun is some sort of horrible person, or something.

Johnny wants to do the shaking this time. “What problem have you got with Jaehyunnie?” He didn’t realize his voice could sound like that—that must be the product of the flowers, and not just… testosterone.

“I don’t have any problem with Jaehyunnie,” retorts the man, expression rapidly going icy. “I don’t have problems at all, really.” The smile he shoots Johnny this time is wry, and more than a little cruel. “Some might argue that I love Jaehyunnie—or loved him, anyway, since otherwise I wouldn’t be here, like you. ”

None of this is making sense to Johnny, and his brain is starting to hurt.

“Yes, he’s sleeping,” the man says. “ _He_ is visiting him.”

Johnny blinks. “Who’s visiting him?”

“Him,” the man says again, without the emphasis this time. “Ugh. Fine, Taeyong… hyung.”

Johnny has no idea who that is. “Okay,” he says. “I don’t know who that is—”

The man interrupts him with a loud sigh. “Taeyong-hyung,” he says, smoother this time. “I’m Doyoung. You’ve met Yuta-hyung, Taeil-hyung, and Mark. Also Haechan. And technically Ten.”

Johnny keeps blinking rapidly at him, and the man—Doyoung—scowls. “Look, you’re not dreaming. Here.” He pinches Johnny hard on the arm, and Johnny yelps, stepping back.

“Ow, hey, no, I get it. I’m not dreaming. Who are any of those people?” Haechan sounds familiar, but Johnny can’t place it.

“Not important,” Doyoung dismisses, then pauses with his mouth open. “Fuck,” he swears emphatically. “Fuck—you’re awake.”

Johnny is starting to feel like this is a dream despite the pinch. “Yeah,” he says. “You’ve broken in. I’m calling the police.”

“You’re not calling the police,” Doyoung says with a snort, then stops after that as well. “Wait, no, call the police.” He nods, glancing around the room nervously for some reason, and then shoves Johnny backward until he hits a wall. “Call the police,” he says. “You know that one officer, Yunho-hyung? You’re not returning his calls.”

Johnny narrows his eyes, distrusting. “How do you know about Yunho-hyung?” he starts to say. “Who are you?”

“I told you. I’m Doyoung,” Doyoung says. “And you’re very loud when you dream—you’ve got no shields. It’s not your fault; Haechannie ripped you wide open just so that you could play Go.”

Johnny zeros in on that like a drowned man thrown a life raft. “Haechan,” he says, hearing it in Jaehyun’s voice. “Haechan. Donghyuck?”

Doyoung nods.

“Haechan is Donghyuck?”

“Look, you’re getting distracted. You need to call the police. You need to get out of here. You need—you can _see_ _me_ , Youngho-hyung. I can _touch you_.” He puts his hand on Johnny’s skin before he’s finished talking, and this time there’s no suggestion that he’s anything but completely solid human flesh, teleportation aside.

“Wait, who’s visiting with Jaehyunnie?” Johnny says. “Are there more people in the house? What’s going on—”

Doyoung grabs Johnny by the arms again and holds him so tight it starts to hurt, his fingers abruptly as cold as ice. “Stop changing the subject,” he hisses. “It’s not important. You need to _leave_ , Youngho-hyung. You can see me. I can touch you. You’re _dying_ and it’s all Jaehyunnie’s fault—” He breaks off, looking shocked to have said so much.

Johnny’s mouth parts. “Well, yes,” he says finally. Then he adds, defensive despite himself. “That’s not Jaehyunnie’s fault, though.”

Doyoung lets go of Johnny’s arm and grips his own hair, tightening and pulling so hard that Johnny winces. “Ugh, you’re so—he’s so—listen, we don’t have much time, and you’re _dying_.”

“Yes,” Johnny says again, starting to get annoyed. “But that’s _not Jaehyunnie’s fault_ , not on purpose, at least.”

“Yes on purpose,” Doyoung says, take a step closer. “Yes on purpose. Youngho-hyung.”

“Why do you keep calling me that? My friends call me—”

“Youngho, but you prefer Johnny, we all heard,” Doyoung snaps. “Concentrate! You’re _dying_.”

“You said that,” Johnny says meanly. “And I know that—now if you please. This is Jaehyun’s house. You are trespassing—”

“You stupid fucking _idiot,_ ” Doyoung roars right in Johnny’s face. “You idiot! You fool! You’re dying! He’s killing you! He doesn’t love you! He only loves Taeyongie!”

Johnny feels the words go through him like ice water, but he grips hold of Doyoung regardless. “Who’s Taeyong?” he says, desperate even as his fingers start to go through Doyoung like sand. “Who’s Taeyong—Doyoung—who’s Taeyong—”

“Johnny-hyung?” That’s Jaehyun’s voice, coming from downstairs. “Who are you talking to?”

“Who’s Taeyong, Doyoung?” Johnny spits, trying and failing to hold tighter. Doyoung seems to have frozen the moment he heard Jaehyun’s voice, and the look on his face is terribly familiar. Johnny sees it in the mirror on his face every morning. “You love him,” he accuses. “You love him—”

“We _all do_ , you idiot!” Doyoung snarls and pushes Johnny back; he makes contact; Johnny goes thudding against the wall, shocked into silence. “We _all do_ , but he—”

“Who’s Taeyong?” Johnny mutters again, watching Doyoung disintegrate before his eyes. “Doyoung—”

“Look it up,” Doyoung says, eyes wild. “Look it up. There’s no time. Lee Taeyong. One sister. July 1, 1995. Please. Lee Taeyong. Lee Taeyong. Lee—”

He disappears in time for Jaehyun to step through him, squinting at Johnny through bleary, sleepy eyes. “Hyung?” he says. “What are you doing out of bed? Are you feeling better?”

“I’m—” Johnny just manages not to say fine, but this time Jaehyun doesn’t smile, only narrows his eyes. “Look—”

“Hyung, it’s me, isn’t it,” Jaehyun says, and the wind goes right out of Johnny’s sails.

“No,” Johnny tries to say.

Jaehyun just watches.

“I can explain,” Johnny tries to say. “It’s not a big deal. Don’t make it a big deal. Jaehyun-ah—”

Jaehyun comes closer, stopping only when Johnny is intimately aware of the fact that he’s got his back to the wall.

“Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny starts to say.

“I don’t love you back,” Jaehyun says, his eyes on Johnny’s mouth. Hearing that hurts, so Johnny shuts his eyes. He opens them when he feels Jaehyun’s hands, soft and supple against the stubble growing on Johnny’s jaw.

“But what if I tried?” Jaehyun says. “What if we”—he shifts his leg between Johnny’s and lines up their hips so there’s no question of what he means—“tried?” Jaehyun finishes.

Johnny—

Johnny groans.

* * *

They end up in Jaehyun’s room. They end up in Jaehyun’s bed, Johnny with his back against Jaehyun’s pillows. Jaehyun’s mouth is hot and hard against Johnny’s own and Jaehyun’s cock is hot and hard against Johnny’s hip and all Johnny wants to do is kiss back, rut back, put his hands up the back of Jaehyun’s shirt and hold him back.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck—”

“Yeah,” Jaehyun says, voice gone husky and rough. “Yeah—Hyung—”

“Touch me,” Johnny says. _Fuck me_. He keeps that inside, somehow.

“I need”—Jaehyun moves away from Johnny on the bed and Johnny whines despite himself, sitting up and trying to shake off the desperation because he’s not a fucking blushing virgin, thank you very much—“things—”

“A condom,” Johnny says, watching Jaehyun’s hands shake as he fumbles through his bedside. “Lube.”

Jaehyun’s ears are like twin red beacons, and Johnny wants to suck on one. “Yes, that,” he says, taking off his shirt. His skin is so fair and unmarked, save for the scar on the left side of his ribs. Johnny wants to suck on _it_.

“Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny manages finally, feeling out of control. “You don’t have to do this—”

“I’m not doing this for you,” Jaehyun spits, facing Johnny rather suddenly with fire in his eyes. “I’m doing this for me—I—I do love you, Johnny-hyung, and I—if this—if it can be _this way_ —”

Johnny kisses him to keep him quiet and to keep from hearing more. This is what he’s been afraid of, and Johnny should put a stop to it, yet… he can’t. Johnny wants to kiss Jaehyun, and finish undressing Jaehyun, and get his hands all over Jaehyun, stroke nipples, scratch forearms, hold tight to Jaehyun’s hair while Jaehyun holds him by the waist and gives him bites all over his hipbones, all the while swearing profusely because it’s been too long, and until recently Johnny had been dying because this was never going to happen.

“Wait—I—”

“Let me,” Jaehyun says, right into Johnny’s pubic hair, and then puts his mouth on him, without a condom, so Johnny slams his head back against the pillow and stares at the ceiling, beyond words.

“You—” he gets out eventually. “Me—condom—”

“Johnny-hyung,” Jaehyun says pulling off, his voice low and rumbling from— _fuck_ —Johnny’s cock dragging against the inside of his throat. “I’m your unofficial doctor.”

“That’s not hot at all, John, get it together,” Johnny mumbles, making Jaehyun’s lips quirk.

“I know your medical history. You gave me your medical history. I can put my mouth on you—”

“Then why—” Johnny waves a hand towards the condom and lube without finishing the sentence. “I mean.”

“Because it’s messy without,” Jaehyun says, straightforwardly, unfairly put together for how rapidly Johnny feels himself starting to unravel.

He feels sexy and happy and loved and strong and it’s honestly a relief, after the last month he’s had.

Jaehyun seems mischievous, if not a little confusing. “You’ll thank me later,” he says, which clears that right up.

Johnny pauses. “Oh, so—we’re—” He gestures, still not sure why he’s not saying it, and Jaehyun narrows his eyes.

“Hyung, do we have to play ‘if you can’t say it you’re not old enough to get it—’”

“You’re putting your dick in me,” Johnny interrupts him, not about to be outdone. “Is what I’m getting from this, right? We’re not doing it the other way around?”

Jaehyun’s expression goes almost closed off. “I don’t do it any other way,” he says, leaving room for very little discussion. Johnny’s okay with that. If this works out, he’ll have a lifetime to change Jaehhyun’s mind.

“Oh, okay. For any particular reason?”

Jaehyun’s face is still cloudy. “I will get out of this bed—”

“There you are,” Johnny says, taking hold of Jaehyun’s ass and hauling him back over Johnny on the bed. “You got all uptight and doctorly. Like this was just a potential cure, and not—” Johnny stops talking, suddenly too shy to finish.

Jaehyun drops his full weight down onto Johnny and blinks at him, unabashed in how they’re flushed together and both almost entirely naked. “Not what?” he says.

“You and me,” Johnny says finally. “Trying.”

Jaehyun’s eyes widen and his ears turn pink and Johnny for some reason can only hear Doyoung, roaring in his face about how Johnny is dying and Jaehyun is killing him totally on purpose, so he freezes. It’s bad timing, since Jaehyun has finally shimmied all the way out of his boxers and he’s so pale that it takes Johnny’s breath away, but he almost seems self-conscious about it, despite the six pack, and the perfectly sculpted v line. Maybe it’s the scar.

“Um, so, I guess—”

“Come _here_ , Jaehyunnie-yah,” Johnny breathes, and drags Jaehyun in for more kissing.

 _You stupid fucking idiot,_ Doyoung said, practically spitting. _You’re dying! He’s killing you! It’s on purpose!_

 _You should stop being in love with Jaehyun-hyung_ , said Haechan, said Lee Donghyuck, scowling down at a Go board.

_You need to leave, Johnny-hyung._

_Oh no—you—oh no—_

_Leave! Leave! He’s mine!_

But it feels good and Jaehyun kisses him without hesitance and Johnny thinks—maybe. He fancies he can almost feel the roots retreating in his ribcage, alveoli winning over wildflower as Jaehyun sinks one finger into Johnny, hushed silent and almost shaking because of it. Johnny decides not to care about the ghosts anymore. Johnny decides to be only here, in this moment, with Jaehyun.

He shuts his eyes. He wraps his hands around Jaehyun’s shoulder blades and holds on, goads him through three more fingers, pulls hair as needed, lets Jaehyun lock their hips flush and sigh, waiting for Johnny to adjust, for it to be okay, for them to be okay.

Johnny comes with Jaehyun’s name on his lips and his mouth open in a near silent wail.

It’s good.

It’s so, so, so, so good.

( _Liar_ , the voice in the back of his head whispers. _Liar, liar, liar_.)

* * *

“Who the fuck are you?” a voice says, but it’s not really a question. It’s mean and rude and practically poisonous, but still Johnny lies there with his eyes closed, because he’s happier than he’s been in a long time, and he’d really not like to ruin this with more weird— _real_ , a voice whispers in the back of his mind—dreams. “Yah.” The voice is accompanied by hands, slapping against Johnny’s bare chest. “Who the fuck are you?”

Johnny slits open his eyes to see a face—a face from before: dark eyes, sharp jaw, and a scar in the shape of a rose. He lets out a deep sigh. “Johnny,” says finally. “Johnny Suh. Who are you?”

“None of your business,” the man spits.

“Typical,” Johnny says, falling back against the bed with a sigh. “Right, well, since you’re not planning on being helpful, if you’ll excuse me.” He goes to close his eyes and starts to think fondly of Jaehyun— _wake up, wake up, wake up_ —and the man snarls.

“Don’t you dare,” he says. “He’s mine.”

That makes Johnny open his eyes and lift his head off the pillow so that he can look at him; it’s quite a lot of rage, for someone who seems so frail. The man is still there, sitting cross legged on the bed and glaring at Johnny. He’s wearing a plain black t-shirt and pants patterned to look like a skeleton. He has dark hair, enormous, lovely eyes, and he looks furious. His arms are crossed, his mouth, downturned.

Johnny sighs. “Who is yours?” he says. “Let me guess: Jaehyunnie?”

The man bares his teeth at the familiarity, and Johnny drops his head back onto the pillow with another sigh. For some reason he’s still naked and pleasantly sore from sleeping with Jaehyun in this dream, and the murderous, angry figment of his imagination— _ghost_ , something in the back of his mind whispers—really is putting a damper on the afterglow. At least there doesn’t seem to be any sort of wet spot.

“I understand that you love Jaehyunnie too,” Johnny says, picking up the blankets to survey the damage Jaehyun did to his hips and grinning at the smattering of love bites lining each hip bone. “But that’s only because I love Jaehyunnie, and you’re—” _Part of me_ , had been the end of that sentence, but Johnny doesn’t get to finish it, because in the time it takes for him to set the sheets down, the man is across the bed and straddling Johnny, both hands around his neck, face twisted into that same ugly, scary snarl.

“He’s mine!” he says, but it’s more of a growl than anything else. “He’s mine! You can’t have him! You can’t have him! How are you even here? How do you even see me? No one ever sees me! None of the others ever saw me until—” He stops talking, doesn’t stop strangling Johnny, but seems to come to a conclusion, and it’s the right one. “You _slept with him_!” he roars, tightening his grip on Johnny’s neck until Johnny starts to see stars, going faint with lack of oxygen. “He’s _mine_! He’s _mine_! He’s—”

 _Hyung, stop!_ a voice that sounds remarkably like Doyoung calls, echoing through the room like a whip. Johnny hears it in his bones, like a bass note getting right down to his marrow. It’s possible it’s not just in his mind, but Johnny can’t tell, too busy nearly dying from strangulation. _Hyung, please_ , the voice continues. _Please._ There’s quiet, and then softer, almost a whisper, _I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I was too late_.

The man choking him subsides, and in the next blink, Johnny finds himself alone in the bed, gasping for air, but alive. He’s relieved, if not still breathless. It takes an embarrassing amount of time for Johnny to come back to himself, the heave of his chest and the rasp of his lungs finally turning back into something more normal, letting him sit up with a wince and a ring of new bruises blooming around his neck.

The man is on the floor all the way across the room, back against the door, and one leg crossed over the other. He isn’t looking at much of anything. Johnny’s vocal cords feel sore, so he takes a moment.

“I’m sorry,” says the man finally. He doesn’t look back when Johnny glances at him this time, only seems to hunch further into himself. “I forget, sometimes. I’m so… angry. All the time. Especially when Jaehyunnie brings home strays.” His head is bowed and his eyes are mostly in shadow and Johnny starts to worry about getting strangled again, especially when the man just laughs. It’s a cruel, mirthless sound. “Jaehyunnie has brought home so many strays. Seven.” He counts on his fingers, stopping when he reaches the middle finger on his left hand. “You’re eight.”

Johnny swallows.

The man keeps talking. “I just miss him so much,” he says. “It _aches_.” He puts his hand on his chest and Johnny is overwhelmed with such tremendous loss that he’s crying before he realizes what’s happening, deep ailing sobs that feel ripped out of his very soul. “He’s right _here_ ,” says the man. “But he’s different… sad. _Broken_ —” The last word comes out as another snarl.

 _Hyung_ , Doyoung’s voice says again, though it’s joined by others.

“Sorry,” the man says again. The feelings go away, and Johnny lies back against the bed, stunned.

“It’s okay,” he manages. Then, “Uh, who are you?”

The man’s cheeks go pink. “Oh,” he says, looking up. “I’m so sorry. I’m—”

This time Johnny feels it coming before he wakes, the tightening in his chest that can only be more fucking petals. “Sorry, hold that thought,” he says, but before he can hear the man’s name, he’s awake, alone in Jaehyun’s bed, and choking on his own blood and spit. It takes almost five minutes for him to hack up what seems to be an entire flower, breathing desperately when he can, and fighting not to panic too hard when he can’t. It’s not the longest coughing fit he’s ever had, but when it’s done, Johnny has a perfectly formed marigold in one hand, moist with spit and mucus, and shockingly gold orange, despite the blood. His throat hurts, his lungs feel like he’s swallowed half a pool, and he can only sit there, staring.

He’s alone.

Jaehyun’s side of the bed is already cold.

Johnny thinks of his strange dreams—of the man with the rose scar—and frowns. _Who are you_? he’d asked, but he thinks he already knows. _Lee Taeyong_ , Doyoung said. _Lee Taeyong. Lee Taeyong. Lee Taeyong_.

* * *

Jaehyun finds him like that, later. Johnny’s not sure how much later, but the sun is higher when Jaehyun comes into the room already dressed for the day and smiles, a brittle, broken thing, and walks to take the flower out of Johnny’s hand without pause.

“It’s a marigold,” Johnny manages, staring down at the blood smeared across his now empty palm because he can’t manage the alternative—Jaehyun’s face, trying so very hard to be kind.

“Hyung,” Jaehyun says.

“They mean jealousy, despair, grief,” Johnny says. “I looked it up, when you were gone.” He doesn’t ask why Jaehyun was gone. He knows. The flower is more than proof.

Jaehyun makes a noise.

Johnny cuts him off. “Don’t, please,” he says. “Not yet.”

Jaehyun sounds wounded, but he holds his tongue. “I—” he still says. “Johnny-hyung, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t apologize,” Johnny tells him, furious for reasons he can’t even begin to explain. “It’s not your fault”—liar, a voice in the back of his brain starts to whisper—“you tried”— _liar_ —“but I’d like to be alone, for a little?” He thinks he’s smiling, but it’s possible it’s more like crying.

Jaehyun seems caught off guard, eyes wide, and mouth parted. “Oh, um, yes, I mean—yes,” he says, with almost… guilt in his eyes. Johnny would attribute it to him not being in love with him but…

He showers. He sobs. He coughs up two more flowers, which he doesn’t even try to hide.

 _Strays_ , the man—Taeyong—said. _Jaehyunnie is sad. Broken._

_You’re eight._

* * *

Jaehyun finds him sitting in the garden a few hours later, knees tucked up under his chin, and phone resting loosely in one hand, unlocked. He has a tragic number of missed calls from Yunho and even a few increasingly desperate, unread KakaoTalk messages from the man, but none of that gets a reaction when Jaehyun reaches for it—what makes Jaehyun hiss and drop the phone, eyes furious, is the news article Johnny had Safari open to, dated April 10, 2018. It’s a simple obituary—nothing fancy—and a picture—Lee Taeyong, smiling, looking far more at ease than any of the times Johnny had seen him, since moving into the house next door.

Jaehyun looks at it and drops the phone, and Johnny lifts his head with strength he didn’t know he had, even though it’s been two hours and he hasn’t coughed up petals once.

“Johnny-hyung?” Jaehyun says. “Are you alright? It’s cold. You should come inside—”

“Was any of it real?” Johnny asks him instead, getting shakily to his feet. He’s freezing despite the season, and still so thin. But already he feels stronger, like reading Taeyong’s obituary has done more than just drawn back the curtain.

Jaehyun is still playing confused. “What? Hyung, come on, it’s cold—”

“Was any of it real, Jaehyun?” Johnny says again, not moving. He meets Jaehyun’s eyes and clenches his jaw and waits, breathing. His lungs feel clear and healthy and not full of blooms. Jaehyun has his shoes on, and a coat. Johnny is barefoot, in borrowed sweats and a tee. He shivers.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jaehyun says, taking a step closer. “Johnny-hyung—”

“Don’t—call me that,” Johnny manages, taking his own step back. “Jaehyun. Jaehyun. Yuno.”

Jaehyun’s eyes flash, but he stops walking anyway.

“Was it real?” Johnny says again. “Were we real?”

Jaehyun tilts his head to the side. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Lee Taeyong, born July 1, 1995, died April 9, 2018, of asphyxiation due to alcohol use,” Johnny interjects, not looking away. “Is survived by parents and one sister, and two best friends.” This next part hurts, but Johnny gets through it anyway. “Kim Dongyoung and Jeong Yuno.”

Jaehyun takes another step forward, but Johnny can tell it’s not purposeful.

“Kim Dongyoung,” Johnny says. “Kim Doyoung.” He feels the truth of that statement like a breeze. “Jeong Yuno,” Johnny says. “Jeong Jaehyun.” Jaehyun’s eyes do fall shut, and Johnny lets bravery fill his lungs. “That’s you, isn’t it. Jeong Yuno. He was your friend.”

Jaehyun opens his eyes. “You knew this,” he says. “We talked about this.”

“So he died,” Johnny says. “Lee Taeyong.”

Jaehyun flinches like Johnny’s hit him, and the petals in Johnny’s lungs that haven’t yet shriveled and died seem to _rile_ , twisting and growing until Johnny has to stop mid speech to cough them up—only three this time, looking ugly, and golden, and small.

Johnny holds them in one hand and thinks of nothing much at all. “I’m sorry your friend died,” he says. “But people we love die all the time, Jaehyun-ah.”

Jaehyun _snarls_.

Johnny forces himself to look at him. “Does that make you mad, Jaehyunnie-yah?” he says, fully aware that he’s treading in deep waters, but unable to stop, now that he’s finally below Jaehyun’s armor. “Does it make you mad, me saying that about Taeyong-hyung? _Your_ Taeyong-hyung?”

Jaehyun crosses the garden in what feels like a second flat, holds both hands in the air like he’s going to grab Johnny and shake him. He doesn’t do the second, but he does do the first, his palms like twin points of heat on both of Johnny’s barely clothed arms.

“What are you going to do about it?” Johnny says, standing limp in Jaehyun’s hold. “Are you going to kill me, Jaehyun-ah?”

Jaehyun freezes, then abruptly lets go. He starts to back away. The fight is almost all the way out of him even before Johnny opens his mouth to keep speaking, but Johnny does it anyway, slams the coffin shut and hammers in the final nail.

“Oh wait,” he says. “You already have.” When he takes another step back, he nearly trips over the garden shears. “Ow—what—” Johnny says, then bends to pick them up. They’re the same ones always on the dresser in his guest room, ugly, lime green handle and all.

“Very funny,” Jaehyun says, in a tone that sends ice down Johnny’s spine. “Very funny, Ten-hyung.”

Johnny stops staring at the tool, and starts looking at Jaehyun. “Jaehyun—”

“You can’t kill someone with garden shears, Ten-hyung, unless you _commit_ ,” Jaehyun says, with his hands spread open. “Are you there? Can you see me? I can’t see you—”

“Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny says, dropping the shears with a thud and stepping hesitantly closer, careful to avoid the sharp blades with his bare feet. “Who are you talking to? I’m not trying to kill you. I’m not—” _Ten_ , the name finds its way onto Johnny’s tongue like the blossom of a petal, and Johnny swallows hard. “Jaehyun—”

“Why not?” Jaehyun’s eyes have gone sharp, his expression wild. “Why aren’t you?”

He’s like a newborn, untrained colt, and Johnny gets right within kicking range. “Jaehyun—”

“Why wouldn’t you try to kill me?” Jaehyun says. “I tried to kill you. It’s only fair.”

“That’s—” Johnny can’t say that it’s fine, because it’s not, but Johnny still loves Jaehyun, even though he’s not in love with him. Jaehyun is this broken, terrible thing, and Johnny? Johnny has always been an optimist, a fixer. When he was little, it used to give his mother grief because she was always trying to replace his toys, and Johnny was always forcing her to mend the old ones, toddling his way to the sewing kit because he knew what it was for, even at three. Johnny wants to wipe the sadness from Jaehyun’s cheeks and fix his fraying, worn out stitching; Johnny _loves him_ , even if he’s not in love with him.

“Mad is _okay_ , Jaehyunnie-yah,” Johnny says instead. “Mad means you’re _alive_.” He shuts his eyes and halts in his trajectory to Jaehyun’s side. He lets his gaze drop to the garden around them—finally noticing the new plot of soil, right next to the poppies. Jaehyun moved the bench—must be getting ready to plant new flowers. Johnny— _Johnny_ is the new flowers.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Johnny says finally, not looking at Jaehyun. “I—we’re still friends, aren’t we?” He feels hollow, like part of him is missing the choking twist of feelings that were how much he was in love with Jaehyun, even if it was never really real. “Aren’t we, Jaehyunnie?”

Johnny looks back to Jaehyun and finds him standing behind him, backdropped against Taeyong’s roses and holding the garden shears in his non-dominant hand. He holds them almost listlessly, gaze fixed on Johnny’s face.

Johnny finds it in himself to smile. “I still love you, Jaehyun, even though I don’t—even though I’m not _in love_ —with you.” He keeps smiling, but more real now. He feels stronger. He feels like he’s finally getting better. He isn’t in love with Jaehyun, not really. Part of him aches, but most of him feels… free. “But I—we could still be friends, right?” Johnny says, asks, hopes. “It’s just”—he does a quick count of all the flowers in the garden even though he doesn’t really need to, already having spent the two hours before Jaehyun found him thinking it all over; Jaehyun’s young men; Jaehyun’s very pretty garden; Hanahaki disease—“seven murders,” Johnny says. “What’s seven murders, between friends?”

Once, back in spring semester, Jaehyun failed an exam, and it was like he’d been told he’d never amount to anything, with the amount of moping he did. Johnny didn’t see him for two full days because he was so busy overworking himself to make up for it, and had to accost a delivery man so that he could lie his way into Jaehyun’s house. “You’re a really good person, Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny told him, once Jaehyun had let him in, and was seated grudgingly at his kitchen counter. “Stop moping. So you failed one test. You’ll be a great doctor. I’m sure you’ll save tons of lives.”

“No, I’m not,” Jaehyun replied, expression gone stormy, but Johnny was able to drag him out surfing regardless.

“Maybe I’m not a good person either, Jaehyunnie-yah,” Johnny offers now, still smiling. “Listen. We’re okay—”

Jaehyun makes a sound, and the hold he has on the shears goes white-knuckle tight.

Johnny can’t help but notice. “Jaehyun. Put down the shears. It’s fine—”

“It’s _not fine_ ,” Jaehyun says. “We’re _not fine_.”

“We are,” Johnny says, taking a deep breath and moving a few steps closer—back into kicking range. “We are fine. I’m not lying just so you smile this time, I promise.” He keeps coming closer, he keeps smiling.

Jaehyun starts shaking his head. “No,” he says, trading the shears to the other hand—his dominant one; Johnny’s heart stutters for one heartbeat. “No. No. No—”

“I’m not dying, Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny says, close enough that he could touch. “I’m not in love with you, but I still love—I still care.”

Jaehyun’s protests die abruptly, the word “no” turning to ash his mouth. “You—I—no—” he says again, head still shaking.

“Jaehyun—”

“No—eight—eight— _eight_ —” Jaehyun says and stabs him.

Johnny misses the moment the shears go through his chest because he’s too busy staring at Jaehyun’s eyes, large and shining and almost entirely frightened pupil—a child’s eyes, not someone twenty-five—twenty-four. Jaehyun’s eyes look like someone barely past twenty, forced to watch doctors perform useless rounds of CPR on a dear friend—his best friend—taken cruelly and too soon from this world. Johnny wonders if Jaehyun wanted to be a doctor before that happened—before—Lee Taeyong.

“Eight,” Jaehyun says cruelly, twisting the blades even deeper into Johnny’s side; if Johnny had any doubt of his intent before, he doesn’t now—not with metal screaming its way through his borrowed t-shirt, burying itself into organs and flesh and blood. “And you used to, anyway.” He gives the shears one last twist, then rips them free without any attempt at finesse, stepping away from Johnny with blood all over his hand and triumph hiding the terror in his eyes.

Johnny drops to his knees in front of him like a puppet with cut strings, one hand coming to hold the hole in his torso like he can’t really believe. “What—you—”

“You used to be in love with me,” Jaehyun says, watching. “There’s a flower growing in your lungs because of it.”

Johnny thinks, stupidly, as he sways on his knees with his insides leaking down one hand, that Jaehyun shouldn’t have taken out the shears. It would have been better to leave the things in—plug up the hole, as it were. _I’m… bleeding_ , Johnny thinks. _I… hurt_.

“I don’t have anything orange in my garden,” Jaehyun says. “I could really use some marigolds.”

 _That’s right_ , Johnny thinks faintly. _I’m the marigolds. You’re—you’re planting me_. He tilts, starts to fall, and somehow stays standing—kneeling—he’s kneeling. “Don’t lie, Jaehyun-ah,” Johnny somehow says. “Don’t lie.”

Jaehyun stares at him, mouth falling open.

“It was—never—about—the garden,” Johnny says, not looking away.

Jaehyun’s eyes go haunted. He looks at the pink rose bush, almost like he can’t help it.

“See.” Johnny is holding his insides inside his body and he feels… faint. “Which one was he?” All of the flowers in Jaehyun’s garden are people, and Johnny… Johnny feels _faint_. “Jaehyun—”

“Mark Lee,” Jaehyun says. His voice comes out in no more than a whisper, but Johnny hears him loud and clear. “Mark Lee. Born August 2, 1999. Died May 24, 2020, of Hanahaki disease. He was on a gap year, not talking to his parents, and he liked… Bruno Mars.” Not once does Jaehyun look away from the flowers as he starts talking, his words speeding up into something of a tumble at the end. “He was almost the right color. I could have loved him if he was the right color.”

Mark Lee.

Mark Lee.

Mark Lee.

“Red—Converses,” Johnny says, and Jaehyun smiles.

“He was always wearing them in the house—Canadians. Almost as bad as Americans.”

“Didn’t you live in Connecticut for four years?”

Jaehyun laughs, but it is a bitter, broken thing. He turns to the next growth of flowers. “Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul,” he says, with pause. “Ten. Ten-hyung. Born February 27, 1996. Died August 24, 2020. He—he had a sister.”

Johnny has to work to look at the morning glory.

“Kim Jungwoo”—the white poppies—“Moon Taeil”—the baby blue eyes—“Nakamoto Yuta”—the golden rod. Jaehyun skipped over the sunflowers without even a pause, but now he finally goes back, gaze lingering on them with something close to pain in his eyes. Johnny realizes rather suddenly that he’s fallen onto his side and is no longer kneeling at Jaehyun’s feet. “Haechan,” Jaehyun says finally, the hand holding the shears dropping to his side, Johnny’s blood dripping down his wrist and onto the ground. “Donghyuckie.”

Johnny can’t manage to look at the sunflowers, but he has to try. The only things in his view are the mountain laurel—“Kim Doyoung”—and finally the red roses—Taeyong’s roses—Lee Taeyong—“Lee Taeyong,” Jaehyun says, almost like reading Johnny’s mind, and steps directly into Johnny’s line of sight and turns so that he can… touch.

“Did you love them?” Johnny says, fighting to stay awake. “Did you—did you love any of them?”

Jaehyun turns quickly to face him, motionless beside the rose bush and watching Johnny with soulless, unreadable eyes.

“Jaehyun,” Johnny gasps. “Jaehyun—did you _love them_ —”

“No,” Jaehyun says, not cruelly just… the truth. “But you knew that, Johnny-hyung.”

Johnny shuts his eyes to hide from the look on his face, then forces them wide before they stop working, hand still frantically clutching at his side. “Did you love me?” he says, like a trainwreck, or a disaster. “Do you—”

“No,” Jaehyun says, still watching him; when Johnny starts coughing on top of bleeding out, he doesn’t come closer, just waits until there are more petals lining the ground among all the blood.

“But I’m not in love with you,” Johnny says, and knows it’s true. “Why—”

“Miraculous cures are the things of fairy tales,” Jaehyun says. “You know that as well as I do.”

“Pessimist,” Johnny snarls, an old argument, with much less warmth. “You—I would have gotten better.”

Jaehyun finally releases his grip on the shears and they drop to the ground beside him with a soft thud. “Maybe.”

“I would have gotten better,” Johnny says. “I’m not in love with you. You’re not in love with me.” Jaehyun disputes neither statement. “Could you have been, though?” Johnny forces himself to say, the words hurting in a way the flowers never did. “Could you have, though?”

Jaehyun blinks down at him, unmoving.

“Could you have loved me?” Johnny repeats, unable to help himself. “Jaehyunnie? Could you have?”

“Johnny-hyung,” Jaehyun says, and there’s just enough emotion that Johnny looks away from him, at the garden. Jaehyun has seven other flowers, not counting Taeyong’s roses. Seven other bodies, seven other lovers—his young men, Sungmi-ajumeoni had said. Johnny wonders what else she knows. If Yunho will eventually know. He probably won’t—Jaehyun won’t let him. Jaehyun’s gotten away with it seven times.

“You don’t have to answer,” Johnny says, back to looking at the flowers. He can’t see the plot of dirt that Jaehyun dug up just for him—for the flowers growing in his lungs, that Jaehyun put there. “I’m not in love with you,” Johnny says again, just to say it, just to _feel it_ , the marigolds wreaking havoc on his respiratory system physically recoiling, retreating, and letting him remember how to live, without love. “I don’t really even know you, after all.”

Jaehyun’s own breath comes in sucked through his teeth, sounding painful.

“But did you—do think you could have, once?” Johnny asks anyway, letting his hand fall away from where it’s been clutching at the open wound in his side. “Loved me?”

He knows the answer.

He asks anyway.

Jaehyun gasps. “I—” he says. “I— _yes_ ,” he says, and it sounds like it aches. “Yes—Johnny-hyung— _yes_ —”

“Oh,” Johnny says, feeling very far away. “Well, good, I suppose.” He feels fuzzy. He feels tired. His hands are sticky and bloody and raw. “I wanted you to be happy, Jaehyun-ah,” he tries to say. “I wanted you to be loved. You deserve to be loved.”

There’s another gasp, another broken sounding noise, and then—coughing.

Jaehyun is coughing, and hacking and _choking_ , and Johnny forces his eyes all the way open so that he can see, lifts his head off the ground so that he can watch, focus already dimming, heartbeat already slowing. He’s lost too much blood, too many insides, and there’s not enough time.

The last thing Johnny sees is the startled, desperate look in Jaehyun’s eyes as he hacks and coughs and _chokes_ on rose petals. Red rose petals. Red rose petals so deep and vibrant in color that they look like they can’t be real; exact replicas of the flowers growing on the rose bush just behind his head. On Taeyong’s rose bush.

“You have such beautiful flowers,” Johnny said, a lifetime ago.

“They’re one of a kind,” Jaehyun replied, and then looked sad.

Johnny understands now. Johnny feels sad too, looking at the petals in Jaehyun’s hand. Some part of Jaehyun must love Johnny, even though Johnny doesn’t love him back, since it’s not real.

_Momma’s boy._

_Glenbrook North High School._

_CHICAGO_.

Johnny feels sad, because some part of Jaehyun loves Johnny, and Jaehyun… Jaehyun will never allow himself to love anyone else ever again.

“Fitting,” Johnny doesn’t hear Jaehyun say, because Johnny doesn’t hear much of anything, anymore. “How fitting, Taeyong-ah. It’s okay. I’ll be with you very soon.”

There are raindrops hitting his cheekbones, soaking his t-shirt, and watering his newly dug grave. Johnny closes his eyes.


	5. Epilogue: Spring

“I can’t believe you made us buy this place for the garden,” says Sicheng, craning his head to watch Kun hack at a few remaining weeds with an unfortunate amount of interest. Jeju Island in spring isn’t as warm as he’d been expecting given that it’s an island, but the air feels so much cleaner out here than it ever had in Seoul, or back home in Zhejiang. Sicheng talks a lot of shit, but he’ll be the first to admit he’s glad that they bought this place. Or maybe not this place specifically—just— _a place_ , because—

“Shut up. You liked it as much as I did,” interrupts his husband, no longer bent over with his ass in the air. He wipes at his brow with a glove, dragging a smudge of dirt there that Sicheng has the horrifying urge to lick off. This is only their second day of nice weather, since the first night it stormed something awful, almost like the place was angry about suddenly having new occupants. Kun and Sicheng could have gone to the beach or explored their new neighborhood or done any number of things to take advantage of the beautiful day, but instead, they’ve spent hours weeding. Apparently the state of the garden was depressing, and Kun hadn’t been kidding when he’d pulled Sicheng aside and told him he’d always wanted to try his hand at landscaping.

“I did not,” Sicheng lies, because even with all the undergrowth he thought the flowers would one day be beautiful, and the yard itself was the perfect size to raise a family. Not that he and Kun have immediate plans to do such a thing, but… some day.

“And I think this one is dying. We need to move it.” Kun is talking about their newly inherited, wild red roses, which probably were very pretty before Kun and Sicheng started pruning to prepare for replanting them. They were all wilted and discolored, but the funny thing about it was they seemed still to be growing; almost like they were budding already dead. “Also, it wasn’t that bad,” finishes Kun, now talking about the five hours spent weeding and raking and trying not to tackle each other into the dirt for a quickie.

“It absolutely was that bad,” Sicheng mutters, still a little sour from all the thwarted attempts at seduction. “And I said that _before_ you had me out here for five hours with a spade.”

“What was that?” Kun tips his head to look at him, sweat-damp hair flopping over one eye.

“I said you forget that the real reason this place was so cheap was because of the double homicide,” Sicheng replies happily, with an extra bright grin.

“Sicheng.” Kun levels him a disappointed frown.

Sicheng fights the urge to make horror movie jokes. “What? You heard the realtor. You read the news articles.”

“It was a murder-suicide,” Kun says. “On the scale of things, that’s much less awful.”

Sicheng stares. “Much less awful,” he repeats, deadpan.

Kun sets his spade on the ground, exhaling. “It’s not like it was a serial killer,” he says. “Or someone breaking in and killing a complete stranger—a robbery gone bad. They knew each other. They were in love with each other.” He gets to his feet and goes to grab a pair of shovels, gesturing for Sicheng to stand and then handing him one without seeming bothered by any of the things he’s saying. “On the scale of things”—Kun sets the shovel into the dirt near the base of the poor, diseased-looking rose bush and then starts to dig—“it could be worse. It’s probably not catching.”

“It could be worse,” Sicheng repeats, watching his husband start to excavate with great interest. “It’s probably not catching—Kun—”

Kun pauses to wipe sweat from his brow. “That’s what I said—look, are you going to help or not?”

Sicheng tightens his grip on his own shovel and steps closer, setting it into the dirt with one foot. “Murder is not ‘catching,’ Kun-gege,” he mutters. “And if anything, the fact that it was a murder-suicide makes it worse, not better.” When Kun blinks at him as they make better progress now that they’re both digging, he continues, “If either of them were particularly inclined to want to _possess_ one of us, it would probably help that we are… you know.”

Kun stomps his shovel into the earth and leans on it, sweaty and pretty and grinning at Sicheng with bright, happy eyes. “No, I don’t know,” he says. “It would help that we’re what?”

Sicheng lowers his own shovel, fully aware of when to gracefully lose. “Ge…”

“Lovers?” Kun says. “Best friends?”

Sicheng can already feel the flush settling onto the back of his neck, but he stands his ground. He’s fucking married to the man; he can handle a little PDA. It’s not even real PDA, since no one else is here. It’s just him and Kun and the house they just bought together.

“Married?” Kun offers gently, with a much shyer smile this time. Kun knows that Sicheng hates skinship and big romantic gestures, but also that Sicheng will hold his hand anyway.

“Yeah, that,” Sicheng says. “We already love each other—wouldn’t it be easy for one of the ghosts—”

“Oh, so now we’re talking like there are definitely ghosts,” Kun says, but he’s smiling.

Sicheng narrows his eyes. “Just because being a magician has made you wise to movie magic crap doesn’t mean there aren’t ghosts—”

“There are definitely such things as ghosts,” Kun says. “But I don’t know. I don’t get a mean vibe, from the house.” He’s smiling at the thing like it’s sentient again, and Sicheng comes to the horrible realization that he wants a family with this man, weird ideas about purchasing houses where murders took place and all.

“You don’t get a mean vibe from the house,” Sicheng says. “God, I should have married Yangyang instead.”

“What’s that?” Kun turns away from the house with another bright smile.

“I said dig, honey, please,” says Sicheng, gesturing with the shovel.

“Love you too,” teases Kun, but starts digging anway.

It’s only once they’ve gotten deep enough that Kun can start directing Sicheng where to put the shovel to cut the bottom parts of the root system that they find them, the bones. They were planning on replanting the roses because Kun thought maybe it was the location that was causing the flowers to do poorly; that what little bit of color they could find was too stunning to just get rid of. Sicheng agreed, because it was a gorgeous almost blood red. And what did Sicheng know about roses—it made more sense that lack of sun was affecting the flowers, not… something else.

But when Sicheng’s shovel connects with something hard enough to be a stone but isn’t—is instead white, and long, and not supposed to be in a garden, rather supposed to be inside _something_ … _someone_ —Sicheng starts to think that maybe the flowers looked like death as a warning.

“Sicheng,” says Kun, the first of them to speak. They’ve both ended up on their knees in the dirt, shovels abandoned, and half dug out rose bush starting to sag to one side. “Sicheng.”

“Kun,” Sicheng replies. “Kun.”

“Those are bones,” Kun says. “There are bones in our garden.”

“Yeah,” Sicheng agrees, throat dry. “They are. There are.” Very slowly, he reaches out to find Kun’s hand, and takes it in his own with a punishingly tight grip. Kun strangles his fingers right back.

“What do we do?” Kun breathes.

Almost like an omen, the formerly beautiful sky lights up with a crack of lighting, and very suddenly, it begins to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First: The biggest, biggest, BIGGEST shout out to Hexmen, who hand-held, enabled, and did the MOST for our beautiful, tragic baby. This fic was inspired by [this tweet](https://twitter.com/goryscribbles/status/1263983824402173952), which Hexmen sent to me with the comment: who in NCT is the flower murderer and who is the one that dies? To which I said: clearly that's my favorite, Jeong Jaehyun, and the REASON he is a flower murderer is because Taeyong died of Hanahaki disease because he was in love with him and now he is on a quest to find someone else who will cough up the same type of flowers. Johnny is the one who's in love with him ~~and dies~~. Also huge thanks to Vic and Mac, who looked this over to make sure everything made sense (as parties who don't know the entire backstory).
> 
> Second: Mountain Laurel (what Doyoung was coughing up/what Doyoung was) is really poisonous if you ingest it, however the magic ones Doyoung was hacking up because he was in unrequited love with Jaehyun were not. 
> 
> Third: Follow me on Twitter I promise I really do love Jaehyun and all of NCT 127 despite writing 42 thousand words of him as a flower murderer who killed them all. 
> 
> Share this fic: [Twitter](https://twitter.com/zimriya/status/1276301455541092353?s=20)  
> Share this fic: [Tumblr](https://zimriya.tumblr.com/post/621942639438266368/hanahaki)  
> 


	6. FAQ

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Perennial FAQ, because I know a lot about everyone in the garden that Johnny (sadly) will never know.

**Q: How did everyone die?**

**A:** Everyone died of Hanahaki disease; didn’t you read the fic? What’s that? That’s not what you all actually wanted to know? Haha, just kidding.

Here’s a detailed look at all the flowers in Jaehyun’s garden. 

**Lee Taeyong  
** July 1, 1995 – April 9, 2018  
Red roses, meaning love [[x](https://hananokotoba.com/hanakotoba-ichiran-eigo/)]

Official cause of death: _Asphyxiation due to alcohol consumption._

Actual cause of death: _Died of naturally occurring Hanahaki disease, contracted due to unrequited love for Jeong Jaehyun._

Taeyong died of naturally occurring Hanahaki disease, which is practically unheard of and super rare. He, Doyoung, and Jaehyun were all quite close friends, and had all enlisted into the army together in 2016. Prior to that, they spent a weekend on Jeju Island, where they made some sort of promise to always be friends. Taeyong was already in love with Jaehyun at this point—or at least, the seeds (lol; I’m so sorry) had been planted. They discharged in December 2017 at which point they all went back to school in March 2018—Jaehyun was starting his freshman year of college.

The exact timeline of Taeyong’s disease isn’t actually something I detailed—but by April 2018 Taeyong was dead of Hanahaki. He died in Jaehyun’s arms, babbling about how, “it’s okay. Jaehyunnie, it’s okay. It’s okay that you don’t love me, I’m okay,” and Jaehyun, frantic and near tears, kept saying, “What are you saying? Of course, I love you. Taeyongie-hyung. I love you. I love you. What—”

His official cause of death was asphyxiation due to alcohol use, thus the family and cops did not require an autopsy. Jaehyun’s exclamations about the roses were discounted—especially when the only other person present, Doyoung, backed the official narrative instead of Jaehyun. (This will become important later.)

Prior to his burial, Jaehyun broke into the morgue and cut one full rose out of Taeyong’s chest—a fact of which was covered up by the poor, probably-not-paid-enough-for-this-shit morgue employee. Jaehyun then Beauty and the Beast style lugged that shit around in a totally healthy way.

Taeyong is officially buried on Jeju Island—probably due to a will request (harking back to that trip he Doyoung, and Jaehyun took). His body was later dug up by Yuta and Jaehyun sometime in the spring of 2018 and then re-buried in the garden of what would become Jaehyun’s house. The roses from inside his lungs marks his grave.

**Nakamoto Yuta  
** October 26, 1995 – July 10, 2018  
Goldenrod, meaning precaution [[x](https://hananokotoba.com/hanakotoba-ichiran-eigo/)]

Cause of death: _Died after having contracted Hanahaki disease when he pricked his finger on a thorn from the rose bush grown from the flower in Taeyong’s lungs._

Yuta owned the house where Jaehyun lives in the story (haha). He was a recluse who lived on Jeju Island, a genius, but sort of estranged from his family, and not really familiar with anyone else on the island—hence Jaehyun being able to get away with taking over his house.

Yuta was one of the few believers in Hanahaki disease, since he had some sort of familial tie to the disease—there was some record in his family of a case, maybe, so he knew a lot about it. The deleted replies to the forum are all from Jaehyun, who, upon Taeyong’s death in April 2018, kind of lapsed into general despair and the darker sides of the internet. They arranged to meet—Jaehyun had ended up on Jeju Island because that’s where Taeyong was buried, and everyone sort of accepted his sabbatical because his best friend had just died.

Sometime in early spring, Yuta was well on his way to falling in love with Jaehyun; Jaehyun thus didn’t have to try very hard to convince him to go dig up Taeyong’s body for _science_. There really wasn’t anything they could do with a body that had been in the ground for a month (sorry, everyone—research was done, though) but Yuta was enamored and Jaehyun was very convincing. And a good kisser. God, poor Yuta. (It’s no wonder he was rage shouting at Johnny only in Kansaiben.)

Jaehyun re-buried Taeyong in the garden of Yuta’s house, and then planted the rose on top of him. It grew into the most beautiful rose bush, and upon commenting on that fact, Yuta pricked a finger on a thorn. Arguably because Taeyong was jealous of his love for Jaehyun; arguably just because; it’s not really that important. Regardless, this was the catalyst for Yuta contracting Hanahaki disease, because the next day, he started coughing up goldenrod petals.

Instead of being distraught by his imminent death, Yuta urged Jaehyun to keep studying the disease with him at its epicenter—unaware that Jaehyun was fully aware of the fact that Yuta only had the disease because of his unrequited love for Jaehyun himself. Jaehyun studied him partially out of honest curiosity, but also, I think, in part because he wanted to become an expert, since he was unable to save Taeyong. I’m sure that at this point into his descent from morality, Jaehyun was still telling himself he was going to actually try to save Yuta—that he was doing this simply to save Yuta.

Yuta died two or so months into his acquaintance with Jaehyun on July 10, 2020, of Hanahaki disease. He is buried in the garden underneath the goldenrod.

**Kim Dongyoung “Doyoung”**  
February 1, 1996 – October 12, 2018  
Mountain laurel, meaning ambition and treachery [[x](https://hananokotoba.com/hanakotoba-ichiran-eigo/)]

Cause of death: _Died after having contracted Hanahaki disease when Jaehyun fed him the seeds cultivated from Taeyong’s rose bush._

Doyoung arrived on Jeju Island in August 2018, one month after Yuta’s death, and found Jaehyun living in Yuta’s house. Both of them at this point had taken a leave of absence from college; Doyoung believed Jaehyun was running from their past, and thus, thought that they might do it together.

Immediately following Taeyong’s death, Doyoung had left South Korea and embarked on an off the grid style trip around the world—while Jaehyun ended on Jeju Island—and both their families have just assumed they’re still doing much of the same. I was thinking they’d all sort of be rich kids—and since Doyoung and Taeyong are second siblings (Doyoung the second son), he’s sort of like the spare.

The most important thing to know about Doyoung is he was also in love with Taeyong. This is important because once he started to fall in love with Jaehyun, Jaehyun did not handle that well. He viewed it as a betrayal to Taeyong, and to punish Doyoung, fed him seeds from the rose bush. Doyoung is the first case of purposeful inducement of the disease in another person, which Jaehyun knew was possible because of Yuta. Doyoung’s case progressed much slower than Yuta’s, however, _and_ he knew what it was. They had a truly appalling argument where Doyoung, who had begun coughing up petals, said to Jaehyun, “I clearly have what Taeyong-hyung had. I need to see a doctor,” and Jaehyun, who did not know that Doyoung knew what Taeyong-hyung had—“Of course I knew what Taeyong-hyung had,” snapped Doyoung. “I knew before _you did_. We were friends.”—might have lost his mind. This is alluded to towards the end of Summer, when Jaehyun details Taeyong’s death to Johnny. Ultimately, Jaehyun was able to convince Doyoung to stay because they were friends, Jaehyun was a medical student, and they were the only two people in the world who understood and loved Taeyong the same way.

Also Doyoung was in love with Jaehyun, mountain laurel case in point.

Doyoung died on October 12, 2018. He is buried in the garden under the mountain laurel.

*Note: This does mean that Doyoung has been dead for like three years. We’re going with them being rich kids and him being the second sibling for why that wasn’t totally weird for his family. (Or maybe Jaehyun just sends postcards from various places around the world occasionally—I don’t know. He’s a very good flower murderer.)

**Lee Donghyuck “Haechan”  
** June 6, 2000 – April 9, 2019  
Sunflowers, meaning adoration and false riches [[x](https://hananokotoba.com/hanakotoba-ichiran-eigo/)]

Cause of death: _Died after having contracted Hanahaki disease when Jaehyun fed him the seeds cultivated from Taeyong’s rose bush._

Donghyuck met Jaehyun in the winter of 2019, when Jaehyun had graduated from his freshman year of undergrad and Donghyuck had just graduated from high school. Jaehyun officially transferred to Jeju University sometime earlier in 2018, with the goal of going to medical school. Donghyuck and him became friends—I’m not entirely clear on how. They probably ran into each other in some store, maybe Donghyuck was skipping some important duty, Jaehyun for sure said something mildly sarcastic, and Donghyuck gave it to him right back, and they were off.

As part of that friendship, Donghyuck gave Jaehyun a fake name “Haechan” in order to keep up appearances due to his age, and was definitely more than a little in love with the weird recluse college student who lived all alone in the big mansion on the island. Unlike the rest of Jaehyun’s victims (ignoring Doyoung and Yuta), Donghyuck’s phone didn’t need to be destroyed, since he purposefully left it at home/kept it clean of all evidence, since… well… Jaehyun was totally the first man he was ever attracted to.

While Jaehyun’s M.O. would become sleeping with his victims and then claiming not to love them as a final nail in the coffin, this was not the case yet for Donghyuck, who Jaehyun really did enjoy spending time with, and he didn’t really set out to kill him. They played a lot of Go, which was particularly funny since Donghyuck had never played before, and he was also a nineteen-year-old kid who totally didn’t have time for actual board games (but still did it anyway because he was tragically in love with the older, smarter, probably billionaire recluse).

By April 2019 Donghyuck was very, very in love, and this culminated in him climbing into Jaehyun’s lap and kissing him. Jaehyun did not kiss back and let Donghyuck down easy, but Donghyuck immediately tried to leave, embarrassed. Jaehyun told him he didn’t need to—they could still be friends. (Jaehyun. You horrible, horrible, morally corrupt flower murderer). Donghyuck did stay, and Jaehyun… I think the tragedy of it all was Jaehyun had probably at this point, started to think about the types of flowers people coughed up—or at least fixate on that. The idea that the person who grew the same flowers as Taeyong would be the person he could love had probably already seeped into his mind, and Donghyuck was funny, and lovely, and fun to be around, and Jaehyun… I think some part of Jaehyun said to himself, “I’ll give him the seeds, and if they’re red roses, I’ll just love him, and it’ll be fine.” He ignored that it was almost the first year anniversary of Taeyong’s death. He ignored all the dreams he'd been having. (And I wonder. What did Donghyuck think of the dreams _he_ was having? He never ended up in Jaehyun’s bed, so he never would have met Taeyong.)

They weren’t red roses.

They were sunflowers.

Donghyuck died very quickly, because of their size.

It rained when he died—because Taeyong was crying.

**Moon Taeil  
** June 14, 1994 – June 14, 2019  
Baby blue eyes, meaning success everywhere [[x](https://hananokotoba.com/hanakotoba-ichiran-eigo/)]

Cause of death: _Died after having contracted Hanahaki disease when Jaehyun fed him the seeds cultivated from Taeyong’s rose bush._

Taeil was Jaehyun’s first active kill—the first person that he set out to really cultivate the disease in. Taeil arrived to Jeju Island fresh off graduation, and I don’t think he told anyone where he was going. Idk, maybe he like, flew somewhere else and took a boat to Jeju—there wasn’t a paper trail, or maybe Jaehyun straight up helped him buy a boat back to Seoul and people assumed he went back and so nothing ever came of it JAEHYUN IS A REALLY GOOD FLOWER MURDERER, EVERYONE. THE ONLY ONE HE REALLY FUCKED UP FOR WAS JUNGWOO. AND AFTER THIS HE WAS LIKE, “Perhaps I will stick to non-Korean victims.” Anyway, Taeil arrived, he was brand new, he was funny, and Jaehyun was like, “The garden could use more color.”

Like, honestly, Donghyuck was the point of no return. Yuta and Doyoung were tragic and as unredeemable as Donghyuck, but Yuta was also an honest accident and Doyoung was partially motivated by love of Taeyong. (First moment of silence for poor Lee Taeyong, who had to watch the love of his life become a monster.) Donghyuck was pretty much the beginning of Jaehyun’s end, hence Taeyong crying—hence the rain. For Taeil, Jaehyun fed him the seeds very early, and then… long conned it.

Taeil was Jaehyun’s trial run. “What would it take to make a person fall in love with me?” was the question he asked. Taeil helped him answer that. That he died on his birthday—honestly I was running out of dates, and I’d hope you’ve all noticed that they are all important dates for NCT (Doyoung was around the day that it was unofficially confirmed he and Johnny were involved in the Limitless MV; but everyone else should be an official release date for something) and ‘Cherry Bomb’ came out on June 14. Anyway, Jaehyun learned how to be a killer with Taeil, and you know, how to be heartbreakingly good in bed with men, lol.

Taeil is thus probably one of the angrier ghosts—but a different sort of angry than Taeyong. It thus takes Johnny a few dreams with him before Taeil wants anything to do with him, and he teaches him a song on the piano. This is what Johnny was humming when he and Jaehyun were gardening.

He is buried in the garden under the baby blue eyes.

**Mark Lee  
** August 2, 1999 – May 24, 2020  
Pink roses, meaning grace and gratitude [[x](https://hananokotoba.com/hanakotoba-ichiran-eigo/)]

Cause of death: _Died after having contracted Hanahaki disease when Jaehyun fed him the seeds cultivated from Taeyong’s rose bush._

We know a little more about Mark Lee thanks to him having… significance to Jaehyun. Mark moved to Jeju Island in January 2020 on something of a gap year, and very much estranged from his immediate family—all of whom stayed in Canada. It’s important to note that Mark survived the longest of everyone barring Johnny. It’s also important to note they both met Jaehyun in January, although I only just noticed that as I was writing this now. I like that symmetry.

The thing about Mark is Jaehyun and he are soulmates—or as much of soulmates as they could be, with Taeyong existing. Mark bloomed pink roses for a reason—he was almost quite right, and honestly, Jaehyun could have let himself love him. Unfortunately, I think Taeyong liked Mark too, and that was unforgivable. (This will also become important.) Mark Lee is the reason Jaehyun’s signature dish is watermelon salad. Mark Lee was for sure the first person Jaehyun withheld giving the seeds to for a long, long time. Mark Lee… could have been it.

Also, Mark Lee would have required the most amount of time because of who he is. I’m sure Jaehyun had to workkkk him hard to get him to fall in love. I also think Mark is the least angry of all the ghosts. Donghyuck is still terribly in love with Jaehyun and mad about it, Doyoung is still terribly in love with Jaehyun and sort of resigned to it, Taeil is just mad period, Yuta is angry and sad, but Mark? I think Mark might understand Jaehyun more than everyone else.

But Mark’s flowers were still _wrong_ , so he’s buried in the garden like everyone else.

**Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul “Ten”  
** February 26, 1996 – August 25, 2020  
Morning glory, meaning love in vain [[x](https://hananokotoba.com/hanakotoba-ichiran-eigo/)]

Cause of death: _Died after being stabbed in the gut with garden shears, also having contracted Hanahaki disease when Jaehyun fed him the seeds cultivated from Taeyong’s rose bush._

Ten arrived on Jeju Island in June 2020, only a month after Mark died. Ten was also… an interesting case, because he totally flirted with Jaehyun first—well before Jaehyun could mass cram information into his head in preparation. I think Jaehyun was also still a little raw because of Mark, and so he turned him down. And Ten respected that—they had a conversation where Ten reiterated that he definitely was not trying to push boundaries but he just liked to flirt with his friends, and was Jaehyun okay with that, and Jaehyun said he was—so Jaehyun’s flirting with Johnny in the first chapter, while purposeful, was also sort of left over habit from Ten. (Even though it had been two people and quite a few months.)

The thing about Ten was Jaehyun probably wouldn’t have killed him, or at least, wasn’t really inclined to feed him the seeds, until the day he stumbled upon Ten’s drawings of Taeyong. Because the thing is, Taeyong liked Ten. Of all the ghosts, Taeyong is the most tied to the house. I’m not sure if this is because he didn’t die in the house and was supplanted, or if it’s because of Jaehyun, but while everyone else can leave the inside and at least walk the grounds, Taeyong can’t—or doesn’t; not until Jaehyun dies (cackling). He’s also the least seen of the ghosts. Like usually he shows up to whoever it is the morning after Jaehyun has widow-spider slept with them and left them cold and alone in the world’s deadliest “it’s not me, it’s you.” He’s sort of tied to Jaehyun’s bed—and doesn’t really visit with anyone else. (Why did Johnny see him in the mirror, you ask? I think Johnny’s just more open to ghosts than some of the others have been.)

But Ten… Taeyong liked Ten. Ten had multiple drawings of Taeyong—the others, if you caught, were Ten and Doyoung as a rabbit, Jungwoo, and Taeil—and Jaehyun didn’t handle that well. Jaehyun found out Ten had been dreaming of Taeyong and immediately climbed in bed with him, which Ten was okay with, but there was a bit of a misunderstanding—a misunderstanding Jaehyun totally and cruelly orchestrated—where Ten thought Jaehyun was saying, “I am interested after all,” until Jaehyun was like, “You’re the best friends with benefits I’ve ever had.” But this was after Jaehyun got Ten to eat a watermelon. It’s not supposed to be funny, but do imagine the amount of sexual favors Jaehyun had to promise in order to get Ten to eat a freaking watermelon. TEN. HATER OF FRUITS.

Anyway, Jaehyun said that horrible thing, Taeyong… didn’t warn Ten (the only one of them he didn’t at least show up to warn despite how much he liked him because of the overwhelming jealousy after Ten slept with Jaehyun; Taeyong is starting to lose himself because he’s been on earth as a ghost for too long), and Ten started coughing up petals but unlike the rest of them, Ten actually went away to try to figure out what was up. There’s this great moment where Ten is going off to try to learn what’s happening to him and Taeyong can’t follow to warn him after all because he can’t leave the house.

But the tragedy of it all, despite being the one who paper trailed through the library looking up Hanahaki disease, is that Ten was in love with Jaehyun, and went back. Ten also ended up in the garden with Jaehyun doing the monologue, and Ten also was trying to fix him—to save him—because he loved him, although for Ten, it wasn’t the same as it as for Johnny. Where Johnny was able to be very clearly separate what was real love and what was something Jaehyun carefully walked him to, Ten wasn’t, so Ten was still coughing up flowers—still very much in love. The shears moved—Taeyong—and Ten clutched them in his hands and he stabbed Jaehyun (Johnny’s first dream) but he didn’t commit. Jaehyun really did say, “You need to _commit_ , Hyung,” but he didn’t make Ten stab him multiple times—he took hold of the shears, pulled them free of his side, and then stabbed Ten with them.

Ten is buried in the garden under the morning glory.

Ten knows how to move objects (the shears) because Taeyong taught him—in a move that shocked everyone, because Taeyong doesn’t interact with the other ghosts. Once Mark let everyone know that Johnny was more open than Jungwoo to ghosts, Ten tried to warn Johnny by sharing his death with him, and then kept bringing him the shears and the drawings to get him to FREAKING LEAVE, but Johnny didn’t.

Poor Ten.

**Kim Jungwoo  
** February 19, 1998 – December 19, 2020  
White poppies, meaning sleep [[x](https://hananokotoba.com/hanakotoba-ichiran-eigo/)]

Cause of death: _Died after having contracted Hanahaki disease when Jaehyun fed him the seeds cultivated from Taeyong’s rose bush._

Poor Jungwoo met Jaehyun in the library in September 2020 and unfortunately, caught his eye. I didn’t do a lot of thinking about him, but I think Jaehyun had been planning on laying low after Ten, who was more complicated than expected, but Jungwoo was funny. Jaehyun probably liked Jungwoo, who also liked Jaehyun, and that’s sort of a death sentence in this universe. He died in December 2020 after the end of their fall semester. At the time of his death, Jaehyun had convinced him to go on a semester abroad—which he did tell his family. When his mother was unable to get into contact with him (coincidentally, around the same time Johnny moves in), she called the school, who then discovered Jungwoo never got on the plane, and the local police—and Yunho—were involved.

Jungwoo is buried under the white poppy flowers. Jungwoo also is able to give Johnny memories, but unfortunately, they’re only of him and Jaehyun studying, and Johnny thinks nothing of it.

* * *

**Q. Why did Jaehyun die/Why was Jaehyun coughing up flowers/Was Jaehyun in love with Johnny?**

**A:** Jaehyun was in love with Johnny (and therefore not in love with Taeyong anymore—although let’s be real; was Jaehyun really in love with Taeyong, at this point?), so he started coughing up flowers. Jaehyun was also a naturally occurring case of Hanahaki—like Taeyong.

* * *

**Q. How did Jaehyun die?**

**A:** After Johnny was dead, Jaehyun cut the flowers out of his lungs like the flower murderer he was and planted them. Then, he took Johnny’s body out into the garden so he could bury him. However as he was doing this, he had to keep _looking_ at Johnny’s body, and he kept coughing up red roses.

He did not handle that very well.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, having put Johnny into a very shallow grave, Jaehyun broke, grabbed the same freaking garden shears, and tried to dig the flowers out of his own lungs. Naturally, this killed him—although not before Taeyong finally managed to leave the house.

Jaehyun died with Taeyong trying to hold him and grab the shears from him, babbling and crying and with his hands only going through him. He looked up and _saw_ him in the way he hadn’t ever before—doesn’t believe in ghosts, thinks the dreams are just his brain missing Taeyong—stared up at him with huge eyes as he bleeds to death and said, “Taeyongie-hyung? Hi.”

Taeyong was crying and scrambling and somehow managing to hold him up from the ground but not grab hold of the shears and saying, in the cruelest repeat of what he died saying, “Jaehyunnie, please. Jaehyunnie, no. Jaehyunnie, please.”

But Jaehyun only said, “Taeyongie-hyung? Hi. I love you. I love you and it’s okay. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

Taeyong isn’t really Taeyong, after that. And while my heart wants them to get their happily ever after—Jaehyun doesn’t deserve that in this universe. Everyone else moves on and Johnny wasn’t ever a ghost, I don’t think.

Doyoung does appear after Jaehyun has died and puts a hand on Taeyong’s shoulder, and says, “Hyung, it’s over. We can go now. It’s over.”

But Taeyong is pretty much lost, so he sort of just _snarls_ at Doyoung.

The reason the roses grow in already dying is because Taeyong’s ghost has lost all shred of who he was formerly. Luckily I’m sure all the bodies get cremated once Kunwin dig them up, so he can finally be put to rest.

* * *

**Q. Why was Jaehyun coughing up red roses—the same flowers as Taeyong? Does that mean anything?**

**A:** So that’s meant to be dramatic irony because the one thing Jaehyun is looking for in another person to love is the one thing he will never find since it’s himself, but also because they’re soulmates in every fic I write. The flower choices were mostly based around meaning and color (except for Taeyong and Donghyuck’s case), but I knew that Jaehyun was going to cough up flowers at the end because he was in love with Johnny after all, and they were going to be what he was looking for.

* * *

**Q. Why didn’t anyone look for the other bodies after Johnny and Jaehyun were discovered?**

**A:** Essentially, Yunho showed up sometime after Johnny and Jaehyun were dead in the hole in the ground and found them, and because they’d both clearly died after being stabbed by the shears—and Jaehyun’s wounds were self-inflicted—it was ruled a murder-sucicide. There was just no reason to look any further, and they weren’t in a hole in the ground that deep. Also, Johnny’s body had to go back to Chicago—it was just a very tragic thing that looked like what it was; no one had any reason to look further.

Also Yunho totally blamed himself for not saving Johnny and fell into despair, thus abandoning his search for Jungwoo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is everything relevant, but if there's anything I missed you want to know, feel free to ask in the comments here. I'll do my best to answer, haha. 💚


End file.
